"AMERICANS VALUE FREE TIME OVER BEING RICH" is the Yahoo headline title this morning.
If the economy is as bad as we're hearing it is, I find it a little surprising that, in a recent poll, most Americans said they value free time over wealth. Of course, the economy may not seem in quite as bad shape as we'd heard this week.
"Everyone wants free time to do the things they want to do, young, middle-aged or old," said Richard Morin, of the Pew Social & Demographic Trends Project, which conducted the survey. "So our desire to play unites us." (don't you hate dopy comments like "our desire to play unites us"? )
"Not surprisingly, those who didn't have money, ranked wealth very highly. This included minorities, first generation Americans and less educated people." (duh) And, "not surprisingly"? is this a news article or an opinion piece, REUTERS?
"The survey also revealed that a disproportionate number of people under the age of 30 and retirees in the group made $20,000 or less a year." Isn't that pretty typical when so many under 30 are still in college and retirees aren't employed??
Larry Elder, on LA radio, did quite a segment yesterday on how the media was 'gloom and doom' about the economy just before Clinton beat Bush Sr. for the presidency. Clinton won, and the economy suddenly improved. And, of course, we all know the media still ignores the fact that we were heading into a downturn when Clinton left his presidency.
I'm not suggesting the media makes up the GDP stats, the unemployment numbers, etc., but the way the information is presented does impact the population, people do get scared and freeze their spending/hiring. "The unemployment numbers were slightly lower this week, BUT........."
I don't ask for lies, don't sugar coat when things are bad, but I'm tired of the spin, emphasizing the bad instead of the good, when it impacts us on such an important level. It's dishonest and very dangerous.
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Actually, there was a lot of good news about the US economy recently. A good indicator is always to look at the European stock market. The German DAX increased by approx. 2% the last two days alone "on good news of the American economy", as Handelsblatt and others wrote yesterday evening.
I fully agree that the media have an agenda, particularly here in the U.S., and it is neither pretty nor helpful for this beautiful country.
In other countries, such as Germany, this agenda is called "Marxism".
Mr. Z
thanks, Mr. Z...very much.
Mr. Z, you are singing my song. How Marxism ever captured the hearts of the so-called "intelligentsia" should be the subject of a tremendous study. It's a mystery to me.
The suggestions that have occurred to me as to why this is so I dare not utter for they always get me in trouble.
Mrs. Z knows exactly what I mean.
I am dependent on a stock portfolio for my retirement income. I have highly competent money managers, and things have gone very well considering all the bad days we've had on Wall Street this past few months.
If things were as bad as the fear-mongering Marxists who control the flow of news and information would have us believe, I'd be broke.
God bless TRUTH!
Freethinke
Marxism makes 'moral justice' for the irreligious, possible. G_d has died. But Marxism is extremely limiting, for its' believers can only dance on one leg.
Nietzsche, "Zarathustra"
The deserts grow: woe him who doth them hide!
-Ha!
Solemnly!
In effect solemnly!
A worthy beginning!
Afric manner, solemnly!
Of a lion worthy,
Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey-
-But it's naught to you,
Ye friendly damsels dearly loved,
At whose own feet to me,
The first occasion,
To a European under palm-trees,
At seat is now granted. Selah.
Wonderful, truly!
Here do I sit now,
The desert nigh, and yet I am
So far still from the desert,
Even in naught yet deserted:
That is, I'm swallowed down
By this the smallest oasis-:
-It opened up just yawning,
Its loveliest mouth agape,
Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets:
Then fell I right in,
Right down, right through- in 'mong you,
Ye friendly damsels dearly loved! Selah.
Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike,
If it thus for its guest's convenience
Made things nice!- (ye well know,
Surely, my learned allusion?)
Hail to its belly,
If it had e'er
A such loveliest oasis-belly
As this is: though however I doubt about it,
-With this come I out of Old-Europe,
That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen!
Here do I sit now,
In this the smallest oasis,
Like a date indeed,
Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating,
For rounded mouth of maiden longing,
But yet still more for youthful, maidlike,
Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory
Front teeth: and for such assuredly,
Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits. Selah.
To the there-named south-fruits now,
Similar, all-too-similar,
Do I lie here; by little
Flying insects
Round-sniffled and round-played,
And also by yet littler,
Foolisher, and peccabler
Wishes and phantasies,-
Environed by you,
Ye silent, presentientest
Maiden-kittens,
udu and Suleika,
-Round sphinxed, that into one word
I may crowd much feeling:
(Forgive me, O God,
All such speech-sinning!)
-Sit I here the best of air sniffling,
Paradisal air, truly,
Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled,
As goodly air as ever
From lunar orb downfell-
Be it by hazard,
Or supervened it by arrogancy?
As the ancient poets relate it.
But doubter, I'm now calling it
In question: with this do I come indeed
Out of Europe,
That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen.
This the finest air drinking,
With nostrils out-swelled like goblets,
Lacking future, lacking remembrances,
Thus do I sit here, ye
Friendly damsels dearly loved,
And look at the palm-tree there,
How it, to a dance-girl, like,
Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob,
-One doth it too, when one view'th it long!-
To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me,
Too long, and dangerously persistent,
Always, always, just on single leg hath stood?
-Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me,
The other leg?
For vainly I, at least,
Did search for the amissing
Fellow-jewel
-Namely, the other leg-
In the sanctified precincts,
Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest,
Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting.
Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones,
Quite take my word:
She hath, alas! lost it!
Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu!
It is away!
For ever away!
The other leg!
Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg!
Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping?
The lonesomest leg?
In fear perhaps before a
Furious, yellow, blond and curled
Leonine monster? Or perhaps even
Gnawed away, nibbled badly-
Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly! Selah.
Oh, weep ye not,
Gentle spirits!
Weep ye not, ye
Date-fruit spirits! Milk-bosoms!
Ye sweetwood-heart
Purselets!
Weep ye no more,
Pallid Dudu!
Be a man, Suleika! Bold! Bold!
-Or else should there perhaps
Something strengthening, heart-strengthening,
Here most proper be?
Some inspiring text?
Some solemn exhortation?-
Ha! Up now! honour!
Moral honour! European honour!
Blow again, continue,
Bellows-box of virtue!
Ha!
Once more thy roaring,
Thy moral roaring!
As a virtuous lion
Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring!
-For virtue's out-howl,
Ye very dearest maidens,
Is more than every
European fervour, European hot-hunger!
And now do I stand here,
As European,
I can't be different, God's help to me!
Amen!
The deserts grow: woe him who doth them hide!
...and as for truth
Nietzsche, "Gay Science"
"Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live."
and
"The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power."
"Will to Power" #1067 (1885)
" And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my "beyond good and evil," without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself--do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?-- This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!"
Hail Aurora! Praise the dawn and a lifting of the veil of night. Let us all now climb Mt Helicon at noon, and observe as Pallas removes her golden armour and begins her bath! Just don't stare or you'll likely suffer Tiresias fate, as I have!
JSG...who did YOU see that caused you to go blind? DO TELL!!
And, who wrote that poetry, the
"to E.Fitzgerald" stuff. Now THAT is poetry. Z approves!! TELL ME, please.
Is that remark about Marxism and God yours? WHOA
Nietzsche blinded me, Freud restored my sight and Rhawn Joseph implanted my third eye (but not ala Frieda).
Plato's most profound dialectic was the "Parmenides". It concluded with a first principle... "If One is not, then nothing is." Plato subsequently spent the entire rest of his life validating and explaining the One (a form of Parmenidian monism).
But it's important to note that in Plato's Parmenides dialogue, Socrates talks with two philosophers, Parmenides AND Zeno. Parmenides had dedicated his entire career to proving the existence of "One". Zeno supported this thesis by spending his career demonstrating through reductio ad absurdum that the concept of "Many" was ridiculous (& attacking Parmenides critics).
Nietzsche, IMO, "surpassed" Plato (much as Zeno surpassed Parmenides) by making all the polemic counterarguments for the existence of "Many"... thereby making any belief in anything other than G_d (including the most difficult problem, nihilism - the belief in "nothing") infinitely ridiculous and impossible. Nietzsche's metaphysics supporting the concept of "eternal recurrence" are infinitely more preposterous that the idea of a Creator. And ultimately, Nietzschean eternal recurrence as a logical proposition is stillborn, as Niezsche proves all logic, illogical.
ergo
Parmenides:Zeno::Plato:Nietzsche
The linked poem was by Tennyson but based upon a theme by Callimachus.
And yep, the observation about Marxism is mine, but the sentiment is all Nietzsche's.
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