A Book for Boys

I can’t remember the last time I wrote prose, or what it was.

Romance at Recess was not the last time, but it was certainly in the twilight of my youthful adventures in longform writing. It’s possible, perhaps even easy, to expend much energy while conveying very little – have you read Lord of the Rings? – meanwhile, Poetry allows me to do the opposite. Still, here we are; so, why?

The place from which I’m compelled to write poetry tells me that there are things which must be said without constraints. One of the primary reasons for the existence of this website is Internet Archive. The people of the time killed Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Kennedy and numerous other tall trees in the forest of humanity; which is to say that I do not write for the people of my time.

I’m enchanted by the experience of reading, reflecting upon, and being amused by the writing of Juvenal, a Roman from two millenia ago. Humans haven’t changed as much as they think and nothing is new under the sun, despite what they think. Here’s looking at you, forty-first century; I expect this paragraph to age as only fine writing can.

Should I have descendants in this life, I hope to teach them many things; things that I wish I didn’t have to learn the hard way; things that I wish I could have seen sooner and, unfortunately, things that I wish I didn’t have to see at all. The truth is mostly ugly; there’s a poem for that.

In addition, there has been a book in my mind for approximately six years now; The Book I Wish I Had, given a more salient title, A Book for Boys. In some ways, it starts here; in other ways, it started somewhere among the poems.

One of the difficulties in writing such a book is simply being a (relatively) young man; young men have no place writing such books, not even in their thirties. All they can do is try to distill what less than two score has given them; that’s not enough. Ultimately, a man must start at some place and at some time if he’s to have a book at all; editing is much easier.

That covers a few facets of Why, but not all.

Why is This? is a question that has haunted me since, about sixteen; twenty-one years now, for those counting. It’s a question I’ve asked, unrelentingly, about everything both tangible and intangible. In another universe, Why is This? is actually the title of this book; it is that central to my body of writing, poetry and prose alike.

The year in which I begin this book is 2022 A.D., and what we call Western Civilization is clearly on fire. If I’m to learn from two millenia ago, then one of the lessons I must observe is that now is the best time to return to prose.

We’ve spoken to the why of this book, now we’ll speak to the how.

As most books go, the initial concept was a book that you read from cover-to-cover. However, The Book I Wish I Had wouldn’t be very good if it didn’t holistically integrate the fact that life does not unfold in a straight line. Therefore, we also write with the expectation that you will choose your own adventure, jumping to what seems most relevant to your curiosity or circumstance.

Just as there is duality in life, there is duality in this book. Its chapters will explore facets of the human endeavor, each focused on either the macrocosm or microcosm of our conditions. Further, an additional layer to this book is provided as a series of interludes. In truth, these interludes are a book, The Book of Versus, within this one.

versus : vs. : v.
preposition
  1. against (predominantly in courts of law, competitions, comparisons):
     - Smith versus Jones; Army versus Navy.
  2. as compared to or as one of two choices; in contrast with:
     - traveling by plane versus traveling by train.

Where this book aims to be timeless, The Book of Versus speaks directly to the conditions of today through the lens its adjacent chapters. Thus we learn from the inherent duality of all things by presenting a book that confronts the big and the small, the timeless and the immediate, through prose and a splash of poetry.

People often say the world is your oyster; may this book be your kaleidescope.

Before we begin discussing the world, let’s step back and paint a big picture; a mural of humanity. Once we’ve painted this mural, we will explore its various parts together.

Out of one-hundred and ninety-five recognised countries on Earth, nearly all are bound by a global financial system with central banking at its core. This is important, but we’ll come back to it later. Among these 195 countries are three notable exceptions, recognized within their respective countries as wholly independent city states; the City of London, Vatican City and the District of Columbia. These are also important and we will also get back to them.

The reserve currency of the world is the US Dollar. For numerous reasons, 1971 is a pivotal year in the lifetime of $USD and wtfhappenedin1971.com sheds light into that darkness. There is an elephant in the room that is no longer an adolescent; other countries are beginning to notice that the United Sates is insolvent. Its demise will inevitably require a conflict that both involves and changes the world. Notably, the most valuable currency in the world remains the previous reserve currency, the pound sterling ($GBP). In defiance to these stand Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH) and their countless progeny, riding the edge of a wave into the unknown.

There are a multitude of things that humans believe in. We’ve been weaving the who, what, where, when, why and how of our existance into stories since before we could write them down; there are also stories for how we learned to do that. Regardless, there are, by majority, five predominant systems of belief; Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and what has been termed Folk religion, which is a neat way to categorise everything else.

Within the last century, information has been empowered to propagate at a rate that is as detrimental as it is beneficial. The dissemination of information is effectively centralized by corporate (e.g. Thomson Reuters Corporation) and state (e.g. North Korea) entities, however, the Internet remains decentralized by its nature. As natural as darkness to light, there is an inexorable effort to change the nature of the Internet that shrewdly offers itself up to humans as the path of least resistance (i.e. convenience and safety); of all the paths, this remains the human favourite.

There is another war underway within the overlap of information and belief systems, that of ideology. As written previously, what we call Western Civilization is clearly on fire. This fire is best summarized by the current President of the Russian Federation whose country had an acute experience with these flames just over a century ago;

After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones — all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today.

Relations between people are — as a result of their reduced physical and cultural proximity, among other things — more estranged than times past. Peace is an illusion often used by governments to disarm their people; around the world and across time, this has been a smashing success; from swords to ploughshares, from ploughshares to mobile devices. Similarly, across both space and time, governments have ranged from retarding to terrorising their people — also generally successful — making the need for physically and mentally armed citizenry as old as the institution of government.

With regards to the inexplicable, referenced here as the All or the Infinite, humans remain largely oblivious. It’s too easy to take the All for granted and to assume that we are unique in its possession, but humans do love their pets and the domestication of everything else in which they see their reflection. Further, much of the information that would impart the All to humanity tends to be hidden and in some cases, prohibited from what we call the Overton window; the window of discourse.

What is today called progress can mostly be regarded as retrogression. Humans have become proficient at speaking in a way that carries a double meaning. In the one hand are the definitions and connotations of the words they use, while the other holds a meaning that is in most cases the direct opposite. Somehow, the majority of humans experience the world while rarely noticing this difference; mostly choosing what feels best and repeating it until it sticks to those around them; this is a tremendously powerful lever. What most people know as truth is effectively repetition; no more, no less.

Applied technique, technology, advances at an exponential rate. Humans no longer take the time to ask, “Just because we can, should we?” That decision is left to an entity, the corporation; recognized as equal to them in their systems of law, afforded superior privileges in those systems and whose edict of perpetual profit mandates that nothing is prohibited if revenue will increase. It borders on hyperbole to state that technology is singularly the means by which humanity will save or destroy itself; the odds of each outcome are approximately equal and tend to fluctuate.

The rise of the corporation has come at the cost of the Earth itself. The flora has been patchworked by monoculture, the fauna have been reduced only to places that humans allow or do not inhabit — even the remote or inhospitable carries the residue of human existence — and humans are everywhere, to the count of approximately eight billion. The nature of the ocean has been changed to include human inventions such as radioactive waste and plastic, while the nature of the air has been changed to include elements collectively called pollution. The effects of these and a multitude of other inventions have been profound and observable within the ecosystems that the Earth has created to sustain itself and within the humans that it sustains. Despite the bounty of the Earth and today’s hyperconnectivity, humans still starve (all the time) and this is still taken advantage of (all the time).

We have always warred with each other, but leave it to humanity to take the humanity out of warfare. As much as possible, those who seek to wage war have removed themselves from the act; remember, the corporation. Technology has given the corporation a distance shadowed not only by its kinetic power, but also by the worldwide reach of cascading effects brought on by hostile intergenerational systems that, by design, bind the rest of us.

These hostile intergenerational systems explain, almost entirely, the totality of this testimony; human nature explains the rest. From ten thousand feet, the intricate mechanisms of control come into focus: beliefs, borders, currencies, and policies designed to maintain the illusion of autonomy. By painting our mural from this altitude, the patterns become clear.

There is still light in humanity; we live, we laugh, we love. That light has always been; right beside the dark that has also always been. It is from the middle, the shadow, that this testimony — and the subsequent others alluded to throughout — is written for the future; to make sense of Why is This?

Whether he chooses or not,
every man is drawn into
the great historical struggle,
the decisive battle into which
our epoch has plunged us.
– Ludwig von Mises

From the Tao, the first verse;

Tao called Tao is not Tao.

Names can name no lasting name.

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth.
Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.

Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.

These have the same source, but different names.
    Call them both deep—
       Deep and again deep:

The gateway to all mystery.

The unnameable Tao and the nameable Truth are not mutually exclusive. Alan Watts would disagree, but that changes nothing, for me. To understand this space, you must have, at some point, understood the concept of the centre of the universe. If you’re unaware, then briefly; there is no objective centre of the universe because any point of observation immediately becomes the centre of the universe when observed.

From there, Mr. Watts would say that the Truth is the same, and I just cannot accept that. Is that a fault of mine? Am I clinging to something that isn’t there, or, is my intuition true in its sense that there are Truths which we mortals can name? As much as one may disagree, one cannot deny that humans continue to look for Truth regardless, and for many, the closest thing we have is mathematics. If that’s a Truth to them, then I’ve just named it, haven’t I? And yes, I understand that these things break down at the quantum level, however, what are humans using to understand that level of existence? Mathematics. So, regardless of what other Truths there may be, we can at least name the closest thing we have to at least one representative, of a, or the, Truth. I wholly believe that there are other Truths we can name. I also believe that there are forces that prefer we didn’t do that.

The fact that each individual must search for the Truth; the fact that, in our thousands of years of writing things down, we seemed to have not written the Truth upon everything (the Pyramids would say, “Not for a lack of trying!”); these things suggest that the Truth does not work in such a way. That said, some human will tell you to put money in a plate so that they can tell the truth to you; notice the change of case, it’s very important. The truth changes all the time; usually across generations, but often within them as well.

• Truth: The sun will come out tomorrow.
• truth: We must appease the gods with a human sacrifice today, so that they may send us the sun tomorrow.

Humans wholeheartedly believe the truth of their time, and I find this highly disconcerting. Speaking of Truths, we just named another one; so, how is Mr. Watts going to tell us that we can’t name them? 🤔 I would love to have been able to send this guy a letter, a tweet, a something… because, as a seeker of the Truth, we’ve really gotta figure this shit out.

---

Something I’ve asked myself for years now; just what, exactly, is a good person? All one has to do is read the news to see that horrible people have all the best stuff. A good person… yet another little t, if you ask me; a useful one, sure, it feels nice, whatever; still a little t.

There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation and naming things.
– Phil Karlton

The previous writing began with the nations of the Earth and the currencies humans use. Taken as an outline, the placement of nations and currency above others serves as more than just an introduction to the state of the world.

Before entering the topic of this day, 2022-06-23, some perspective; one million seconds is roughly eleven and a half days; one billion seconds is roughly thirty-one and a half years; one trillon seconds is roughly thirty-one and a half millenia. An observation of the modern time, perhaps all time, is that humans tend to talk about million, billion and trillion as if the difference between them is merely big, bigger and even bigger; time shows the difference to be much more, in mulltiple ways.

In fairness, we have very little to go by when it comes to accurately representing these figures in the material world. Counting a billion of something, with no breaks at all, easily consumes nearly half of an average lifetime. We rely on abstracts in mathematics and approximations in units of measure to visualise with any comprehension at this scale.

Now, with some perspective (and fairness), note that one of the world’s nations owes approximately thirty trillion dollars, which raises questions (“To whom?”, “Why?”) that bear no easy nor pleasant answer. Other questions such as, “Repayable when?”, “Repayable how?” or the exceedingly funny, “Repayable by who?”, easily bear bittersweet laughter.

Often, when contemporaries apply “Why is This?” to the topic of currencies, their story begins approximately three hundred years ago with a man who is credited as saying,

Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.

Apparently, this man also said,

The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from its profits or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class.

Illuminated insight, to be sure. However, three centuries is only five per cent of the six millenia that humans have used currency as an intermediary between wanting and having. Currency initially took the form of food, then metal, then paper and now bits; sequences of zeros and ones brought into existence by the proliferation of technology resulting from the second war (in our time) to involve multiple nations across continents; we’ll get back to this.

When currency transitioned from metal to paper – roughly a thousand years ago – something that was already abstract (value) began to cut its material ties to the world (representation). Upon those cuts, this bandage bondage contract; “such-and-such a paper is to be equal in value to some specific amount of metal by the authority of we who decide and the compliance of you who participate; further, to ensure participation, we’ll be confiscating your metal; lastly, for your safety, we’ll be confiscating your weapons.”

By the time currency transitioned to bits – roughly fifty years ago – this contract had already been broken for forty years; more on this shortly.

The importance of material ties is best illustrated by example; wheat that has been harvested, measured and bundled does not produce more wheat that is harvested, measured and bundled; gold that has been mined, smelted and minted does not produce more gold that is mined, smelted and minted; These examples emphasise something that humans innately know; something from nothing is unnatural (to us).

A philosopher from twenty-three hundred years ago, revered today, apparently said;

There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of a modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

Paper is a convenient step around the weight of metal and the impracticality of food (especially when unencombered by inconvenient contracts) whille bits serve to disintegrate the boundaries of value and representation entirely. Bits, in isolation, are not the problem; in many ways they are a viable solution. The problem, aside from the usury noted by Aristotle, is the timeless desire by a few to control the many. To these few, bits offer not only unprecedented control over external human behavior, but also unprecedented potential by their integration within the human body.

It was written previously, with caution, that technology is singularly the means by which humanity will save or destroy itself; this, integration with the body, is a fine example. On the one hand, dare humans hope, is the extension of life through the enhancement of these vessels that we find so frail. On the other, beloved by the covetous, is centralized control of Earth with atomic resolution; that is, the resolution of one within eight billion or more, to reward compliance and to punish disproportionately accordingly. As far fetched as these options may sound (with time certain to alleviate any surprise) technology already allows us to modify the building blocks of our construction and, as of this writing, recent publishing indicates that humans have completed their understanding of their genomic sequence (“understanding”, so they say).

In the year 1997 AD, a man developed an algorithm (a series of instructions) to protect vulnerable Internet resources. Until shortly before this point in time, the Internet was mostly a trusted venture between the military and academia of the United States and its selected allies; messages were generally sent by trusted parties which would change as the Internet was made available to the general public. The algorithm’s original description describes it as a method of payment to send messages. Eleven years later, it would be adopted to provide, simply, a method of payment; for anything, to anyone, in any place and at any time.

In place of the previous contract, Bitcoin offered one with a very salient clause; a maximum number beyond which no more could be created (twenty-one million). The importance of this insight relies upon both history and human nature; when given a chance to lie about the value represented by their paper, humans will lie, always. Prior to lying about the value represented by their paper, humans would clip the edges of their metal and lie about the value (weight) represented therein. The author is unware of how humans lied about the value represented by their food, but is almost certain that humans lied.

Still, insight is not enough. It should not surprise the reader to learn that humans lie about the value of bits and that there are thousands of digital currencies attempting to extract the paper that is, for now, still valuable. Bitcoin is not used; the humans decided instead to make it a store of value (and speculation) rather than a means of trade. [cue laughter]

When humans lie about the value of a representation, that representation diminishes in value. As paper this is observed by an increase in total number relative to whatever is decided dictated by the contract (as bits, by an indirect tether to paper). This is also called inflation, about which an author wrote approximately fifty years ago while studying events of approximately fifty years prior;

Undoubtedly, though, inflation aggravated every evil, ruined every chance of national revival or individual success, and eventually produced precisely the conditions in which extremists of Right and Left could raise the mob against the State, set class against class, race against race, family against family, husband against wife, trade against trade, town against country. It undermined national resolution when simple want or need might have bolstered it. Partly because of its unfairly discriminatory nature, it brought out the worst in everybody - industrialist and worker, farmer and peasant, banker and shopkeeper, politician and civil servant, housewife, soldier, merchant, tradesman, miner, moneylender, pensioner, doctor, trade union leader, student, tourist - especially the tourist. It caused fear and insecurity among those who had already known too much of both. It fostered xenophobia. It promoted contempt for government and the subversion of law and order. It corrupted even where corruption had been unknown, and too often where it should have been impossible. It was the worst possible prelude - although detached from it by several years - to the great depression; and thus to what followed.
— Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies, 1975

There are three loose ends so far – war, contracts and lies – which emanate disproportionately from the same place; usury and the money changers in the temple who became the financial lenders of monarchs, now represented by international and centralized monetary institutions.

When wars are traced back through time with an eye for this common enemy that cares not for nation, class nor race, one can see them everywhere (usually on both sides of a conflict, ready to buy up the pieces). From this common enemy one also finds many policies, treaties and contracts dictating to humans how they shoud live and many distortions, diversions and defamations to ensure their ignorance and subjugation.

A sovereign is given two choices; comply or see forces upon your borders. In the modern time, this has transitioned to; comply or see rebellion within your territory. Through debt induced bankruptcies, wars both covert and overt, blackmail, bribes, murders, coups, infiltrations, rebellions, corporate takeovers and more, there are effectively no sovereigns left.

Everyone borrows their present with interest to be paid from their future.

After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the middle of the day whilst surrounded by people who swore an oath of protection, the message was clear; comply or die. The Internet allows anyone to hear how the same press corps he tried to warn about the common enemy, just sat there and laughed, rather than relay his message to the people.

While currency is the lifeblood of nations, to understand the common enemy, humans must first understand the blood of life.