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Humanism Has Run Its Course And Is Being Supplanted By Environmentalism

6/16/2019

Most regard humanism as a positive philosophical and ethical stance founded upon rationalism and empiricism. Pitting humanity as the crowning glory of Nature, modern humanism is an essentially secular concept (yes, there were or perhaps still are varieties of religious humanism, but these are not religious in any true sense of the word). Historically, humanism devastated most traditional forms of Christianity by waging a relentless war against what it declared to be dogma and superstition.

Of course, the argument could be made that humanism was an essential step in the evolution of consciousness, that dispelling Church dogma and recognizing some of the corruption inherent in organized Christianity was an important step forward in the spiritual evolution of Man. This is all well and good, but if one examines our contemporary milieu, one would be hard pressed to point out any meaningful examples of any type of spiritual evolution occurring at all.

True, we are no longer obedient, brainwashed little children accepting everything churches and priests tell us, but we certainly have not evolved into responsible, mature, spiritual adults interested in picking up where organized religions left off. On the contrary, we have devolved into distracted and rebellious teenagers who find meaning only in vulgar hedonism and crass materialism. In addition, the vast majority of us are committed to senseless self-destruction, both individually and collectively.

If humanism was indeed a necessary evolutionary step, it was a step away from something rather than a step toward something. Humanism managed to loosen the constrictive bonds of traditional religion, grant a certain degree of freedom, individuality, and independence, and recognize the dignity of humanity, but rather than empower Man spiritually, humanism ultimately crippled Man by leaving him to fend for himself in a world stripped of any semblance of the divine. In essence, humanism lured Man away from whatever was left of the divine in organized religion and utterly alienated Man from his own divine self and God. Humanity became the center of everything, and was thus enslaved in the material world.

Humanism destroyed the supernatural and left only the natural. Man ceased being a true subject and became an object. Worse, though Man was touted as the center of the universe, he was actually reduced to being just another objects among objects. Humanism scoffs at the afterlife, at other possible worlds; as a result, it insists Man's happiness and fulfillment can only be found in one brief lifetime and only in the material world. Positivism, naturalism, reductionism all ensued and Man was left with no meaning and with no higher calling other than to satiate his passions and desires. Simply put, humanism is anti-human for the simple reason that it never acknowledged or addressed the full human being.

Our contemporary Western civilization is now post-peak humanism. There is no ascent left in the humanistic thrust. Even notions of philanthropy and kindness have been distorted and corrupted beyond all recognition. Humanism has created societies based on nothing more than rabid consumption. This rabid consumption has created some environmental problems. The extent of these are arguable. Nevertheless, these environmental problems will now be exploited to knock Man from the pedestal upon which humanism perched him many centuries ago.

Humanism degraded man by refusing to acknowledge his innate divinity. Nevertheless, in its purely anthropological outlook, it did strive to empower humanity, but the power it granted Man was terribly one-sided. Since humanism denied Man was created in God's image, it sought its own ideals of perfection. This often required the eradication of all within humanity that was considered imperfect. This gave rise to all sorts of horrors including Marxism, Fascism, and predatory Capitalism.

Humanism, which claimed to liberate individuals, was only too happy to enslave and destroy countless individuals in the name of something "higher." As horrible as these ideological systems were, their central goals were still theoretically rooted in humanistic ideals - justice, prosperity, happiness, equality, and all the rest of it. In theory at least, these totalitarian movements still touted that there was something worthwhile in Man, something that justified sacrifice, hardship, even murder.

At its core, contemporary environmentalism does not recognize anything worthwhile in Man. Environmentalism values Nature above all else. For the hardcore environmentalist, Nature is God. Man is Nature's fallen angel - a rebellious, harmful fool who seeks to destroy Nature. For the environmentalist, Nature is the only possible Good. Humanity is a cancer upon Nature. A plague. A disease that must be eradicated. Some environmentalists argue Nature would be better off if Man ceased to exist altogether.

Will this extreme form of environmentalism ever take hold of Western society? Probably not. But you can be sure of one thing, the Establishment will continue to wield environmentalism as a weapon of mass enslavement and control. Humanism succeeded weakening Man's relationship to God. Rather than strengthen Man's relationship to Nature, environmentalism will succeed in weakening it. Rather than regard himself as an intrinsic part of something good, or as part of God's loving creation, Man will begin to think of himself as an ungrateful, worthless parasite whose very existence is an offence against the cosmos. At least, this is what the Establishment seems to be pushing for.

The Establishment will use environmentalism to convince those living in the West that the party humanism started a few centuries ago is now over. The Establishment has already and will continue to tax, curtail, legislate, monitor, penalize, restrict, ration, punish, and ultimately control and enslave Man all in the name of saving the planet. Brainwashed into believing he is a blight upon Nature, Man will willingly comply in a guilt-laden effort to save the thing that knocked him from his pedestal - Nature.

Think I am exaggerating? Consider some recently levied taxes and recently passed laws. Examine some of the recent discourse at the highest levels of international and globalist governance. Still not convinced? Look a little lower. For example, I recently overheard a conversation in which one individual declared taking vacations could no longer be considered ethical because carbon-footprint, or whatever, and that the government should step in and ban all vacations for everyone in the West. Oh yeah, and cars and factories and air-conditioning and medical waste, too.

Humanism stripped us of our divinity. I have a feeling environmentalism will be used to strip us of what's left of our corrupted and degraded humanity. The Establishment is working hard to convince us that we are all environmental sinners, and it will demand penance and atonement for these sins, minus all the messy religious stuff, of course.

Naturally, you could argue this could be another step in our spiritual journey, in the evolution of our consciousness, in the same manner humanism was. Then again, Man was still an inherently spiritual being when Humanism kicked in. Could the same be said of Man today?

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Munkácsy - Glorification of the Renaissance

6/16/2019

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Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy completed his "Glorification of the Renaissance" 1888. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna commissioned the work for one of its ceilings and the painting itself is basically an atelier-collage of Renaissance Masters.

Raphael and Leonardo converse with each other in the bottom left hand corner while Veronese works on an enormous canvas behind them a little farther to the left. In the middle of the image, Titian instructs a young student who is focusing on a model. Michelangelo, with hammer in hand, leans over the balustrade in the right hand corner. Pope Julius II appears in the loggia near the top of the painting, which was Munkácsy's way of paying tribute to a papacy that had supported the flourishing of the arts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Munkácsy makes sure to include himself in this depiction of apotheosis - he appears just behind the reclining female on the right hand side.

The grandness of Munkácy's creation can only truly be felt in person, but even a photograph of its setting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is enough to take one's breath away.

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Communication and All The Smoke in My Life

6/14/2019

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I have decided to stop smoking. I will not go into my history of smoking, my previous failed attempts at quitting, or any of the details that ultimately inspired my decision. That sort of thing tends to bore readers and outsiders. Instead, I would like to take a page from William Arkle and approach my decision to quit from the perspective of communication.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, the cosmos is constantly communicating information to us. By this I do not mean the obvious lines of communication such as the mass media, conversations with people, or personal sensations such as pleasure and pain. Everyone is more or less aware of these kinds of messages, though even these are often misinterpreted, misconstrued, or misunderstood. What I am referring to are far higher and more subtle lines of communication, ones that often go unnoticed or are disregarded.

Over the past month or so, I have experienced many of what I would term coincidences and synchronicities regarding my tobacco habit. To begin with, smoking has been at the forefront of my consciousness for the better part of four weeks. This itself is strange because I had rarely given smoking much thought at all over the past decade or two.

Yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I have been thinking about quitting smoking a great deal lately. The source of these thoughts are not external, as they often were in the past. In other words, anti-smoking television campaigns or the startling images plastered on cigarette packets have not been the source of my impulse to quit. The impulse originated from somewhere deep within my own thinking.

However, the moment I began thinking about smoking, I began picking up on strange signals in the external world - symbols and snippets of communication that mirrored exactly what I had been quietly thinking about. Once again, these were not obvious forms of communication like anti-smoking ads. They were far more nuanced in their symbolism.

I disregarded the first four or five of these as meaningless coincidences, but the signals kept coming. They grew stronger and harder to ignore as time went on, so much so that the past week has been akin to standing next to a wailing air raid siren.

In light of all of this, I have come to the following realization - if I ignore what I have experienced over the past month, it will be at my own peril. Not physical peril or psychological peril, but spiritual peril.

I am approaching the matter from an entirely different angle now. It is not about conquering a physical addiction or overcoming psychological dependence.

It is about communication and thinking, which means it is spiritual. Which means it simply must be done. And done it will be.

In all honesty, I feel very positive now that the smoke is clearing.

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Anchoring a Can of Birds

6/13/2019

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Writer and blogger S.K. Orr often writes beautifully descriptive posts about nature and wildlife. Reading his blog regularly must be rubbing off on me because I find I myself taking a greater interest in the wildlife in my own surroundings.

For example, the other day I walked into one of the outbuildings in my backyard and noticed a small, rusty can overflowing with grass and twigs perched on the ledge above the door. The can was precariously close to tipping off the ledge. Out of curiosity, I picked the can up and looked inside it. The can contained a neat and compact little nest complete with five small eggs. I smiled and returned the can to the ledge. As I did so, I noticed the tin can was large enough to jut over the ledge regardless of how far I pushed it back against the wall.

Later that evening, I spoke to my father via Skype and mentioned the nest I had found. He warned me the nest would likely tip from the ledge once the eggs hatched if it were not secured in some manner. I nodded my head in agreement.

The next evening, I walked into the outbuilding to survey the nest again. The female bird sat inside the can minding her clutch of eggs. I examined the mother bird for a while and committed its features to memory (I later discovered it is a black redstart). I then stepped closer to the can-nest to determine how I could secure it to the ledge. My movement startled the female, and she flew out of the building leaving her nest unattended.

Seizing the opportunity, I quickly mixed some ceramic tile adhesive in a small plastic bucked and applied some to the ledge beneath the can. I then put some more adhesive around the edge of the can and the lip of the ledge, essentially creating a small barrier that anchored the tin in place. Once I had completed the work, I left the outbuilding and went to sit on the terrace to await the mother bird's return. I did not have to wait long. Within ten minutes she was back in the building. A short time later, her partner joined her inside. I checked on the can-nest the next morning. The female was sitting in the can incubating her eggs. The adhesive had dried perfectly; the tin can was secure.

The eggs will likely hatch in another week or so. When they do, I'll have a little black redstart family in the outbuilding, one I can observe and track intermittently every time I retrieve my bicycle or a garden tool. In any event, I can confidently declare that I am probably the only person in the village who has a can of birds on his property. For lack of a more original expression, I think that's pretty neat.

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A Hard and Heavy Life

6/12/2019

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If I had to describe my uncle's life in the briefest manner possible, I would say it was a hard and heavy one. The youngest of four children from a working class family, he was physically abused and somewhat neglected as a child. He became a bricklayer's apprentice at the tender age of fourteen and dedicated the following fifty years laboring under the constant crush of concrete, masonry, brick, and stone.

Like most men who entered this vocation during Hungary's communist times, my uncle worked hard and lived harder. He smoked two-to-three packs of cigarettes and drank about eight-to-ten bottles of beer every day for each of those fifty years he poured into constructing buildings and houses. Despite his vices, he was a tough, wiry man and could work from sunrise to well after sunset in every imaginable type of weather without so much as a word of complaint about the work.

Though he complained little about work, he enjoyed griping about pretty much everything else - nitwit politicians, greedy bankers, ungrateful relatives, dishonest lawyers, and the predatory economy were among his favorite grievances. Of course, he was not without his own faults, which ran as old and deep as the horizontal wrinkles lining his brow.

For one, he could be incredibly pigheaded and belligerent, and he would often argue simply for the sake of arguing. When he sensed he was losing an argument, he quickly dug a trench and was happy to enter into a seemingly endless war of attrition rather than simply admit he might be wrong. He could also be extremely tightfisted and mean, so much so that he often chose to eat the cheapest possible food he could find rather than spend his hard-earned money on something tasty and nourishing. Naturally, he was less miserly with money when it came to his cigarettes and beer, but even there he often chose the cheapest brands or would stock up if he noticed a superior brand on sale.

Some of his other faults were more trivial in nature - sometimes humorously so. For example, he claimed to have a severe allergy to dairy products and would refuse to eat from a jar of jam he suspected might have been tainted by a buttered knife. He was averse to mayonnaise simply because it was white like milk. At the same time, he had no problem consuming ice cream sundaes topped with whipped cream or birthday cakes with rich butter icing.

My uncle married young and had two sons, but his hard and heavy life eventually wore away his wife's nerves. He certainly was not a physically abusive man, and he loved his family, but the gruelling labor coupled with the perpetual call of the bar after work meant he sometimes did not go home for two or three days at a stretch, even when he was working in his own town. Not surprisingly the marriage did not last, and my uncle's wife eventually threw him out.

He went on to buy a lot on the outskirts of Budapest and began building a house for himself. He moved into the house when it was half-finished, but for the next thirty years his house remained a perpetual work in progress. As time passed, the surrounding neighborhood became extremely desirable and slowly filled with new, stylish, modern mansions complete with towering panes of glass and lush green lawns. In this mosaic of new wealth, my uncle's unplastered, half-finished house stood out like a canker sore. To worsen matters, he got into the habit of collecting stray dogs. At last count he had seven of them in the yard, each one dirtier and mangier than the one before.

I imagine he brought the dogs home for company. Though he had friends and workmates, my uncle likely spent much of his time away from work alone. Perhaps the dogs gave him something to come home to. Or perhaps he pitied them because they were outcasts. He too was something of an outcast, but as far as I know, no one ever pitied him for this. On the contrary, his chosen derelict lifestyle inspired mostly scorn and criticism from the rest of the extended family. All the same, it would be too much to say no one cared about him. He had a knack for annoying everyone, but no one in the family would ever admit to not loving him.

My uncle, in turn, was capable of a great deal of love in his own gruff and awkward way. He would always bring children chocolates and little toys when he paid visits to relatives. Whenever a family member needed help with construction or repairs, he was there to answer the call. He helped me with my own house after I purchased it. On one particular job he spent more than a week on his knees tiling the floor while I ran back and forth cutting the proper measurements and mixing adhesive.

When he came to help me, he stayed at the house, sometimes for a month at a time. Though he occasionally aggravated me beyond description, I was grateful for these times. Not just for the work the man provided, but for my chance to know him a little better. I enjoyed sitting with him after a hard day's work, listening to him gripe about politicians as he methodically rolled the fifty or sixty cigarettes he would need to get him through the next day's work. Though he rarely revealed anything about his own history or his personal life, the hardness and heaviness of it all was apparent in his demeanor. Despite this, he at times possessed a charmingly childish sense of humor and could find amusement in the most crude and inane topics.

Although I have spoken of my uncle in the past tense in this piece, he is still alive, albeit barely. Earlier this week he did something he had rarely done in his life - he visited a doctor. The next day my wife happened to call him about an unrelated matter. Over the phone's speaker, I listened to him confess that he was not well; his voice was laced with the silent thunder of pain. He informed us he was in a hopelessly bad state and quickly shook us off. The next day he checked himself into a clinic, but the clinic informed us there was not much it could do to help him other than ease his suffering.

My uncle, in his stubborn stoicism, has been dying on his feet for the better part of a year and is now likely on his last days. He has chosen to die much the same way he lived. Hard and heavy. As much as I hate to admit it, I find some nobility in that.

I have not visited my uncle yet. The clinic is a two-hour drive from my village, but this is not what has prevented me from going. As much as I want to see the man, I am unsure he wants to see me. More correctly, I am not sure he wants me to see him in the state he is in. Other family members have informed me he is now merely a shadow of the man he used to be. My extended family has also told me my uncle essentially grunts at their presence when they visit him, and after a few minutes, he politely asks them to leave.

Nevertheless, I know I must I go. I hope there is still time to see him and speak to him before the hardness and the heaviness that have marked his life finally come crushing down upon him. I pray he leaves the burden behind when it does come down, and I hope he searches instead for some lightness and sweetness, the kind of lightness and sweetness that was perpetually beyond his reach during his hard and heavy life.

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Székely Humor

6/11/2019

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The Székelys (or Szeklers) are a Hungarian subgroup who live predominately in what is today a part of Romania. I have known a few Székelys in my lifetime, but I have never visited Székely Land, though I plan to do so in sometime in the near future.

In any event, Székely people are often stereotyped as being crafty, hardworking, stubborn, and taciturn. This last characteristic is best represented by the meme below, which perfectly depicts the relationship of a traditional Székely couple.

The speech bubbles contain the following:

Wife: Do you still love me? You never tell me!
Husband: I told you once. If anything changes, I'll let you know!

I imagine this meme or joke has been used elsewhere or has been applied to other people/cultures, but a part of me hopes it hasn't because it seems to suit the stereotype of Székely people perfectly.

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Nobody is a Nobody

6/9/2019

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What’s that? It doesn’t really matter in the end because you are nobody? An insignificant human among billions of other insignificant humans? Look, I am not a violent man, but when I hear nonsense like that, I feel the urge to break things. Why, you ask? All right, give me a minute, and I will explain. I’m going to wade into some metaphysical stuff here that will probably make you roll your eyes, but bear with me for just a little while and grant me the benefit of the doubt.

The idea that you are nobody is a deep sort of metaphysical blasphemy. Imagine you have a spiritual side. Yeah, yeah, I know, just humor me for a second, will you? Just pretend, at least. Okay, so you have a spiritual side. I’m going to call this spiritual side your Real Self (though you can call it, among other things, your True Self, your Divine Self, or your Higher Self). Now imagine this Real Self existed before you were born and chose to leave the spiritual realm and incarnate on Earth in order to learn and develop spiritually. No, I’m serious. Stop shaking your head and hear me out. No, it’s not just unbelievers who sometimes consider themselves nobodies. Many believers also wander about moping about how they are nobodies and how their lives are insignificant, so you are not alone here.

Anyway, your Real Self is unique and unrepeatable, and that part of you came into this world for a purpose. Your Real Self freely and intentionally chose the physical circumstances you would be born into – parents, geography, culture, time – because it knew this arrangement of physical aspects would provide exactly what was needed for learning and development. Your Real Self has a mission and this mission is incredibly significant, not just for you, but for the universe and Reality. And here’s the thing – you are the only one who can intuit what this mission is.

Your Real Self is the pure subjective side of you. The true subjective side – a microcosm of the universe. When you think about yourself as insignificant, you deny this subjectivity and regard yourself as nothing more than an object among objects; a thing among things. Interestingly enough, this is exactly how the Demons want you to think about yourself. That’s right, Demons. Ah, there’s the eye-rolling again. Come on, hang in there, I’m almost done. Look at this way, there’s a group of evil spiritual entities that do not want your Real Self to find its purpose and fulfill its mission and they work extremely hard to derail everything.

One of the most effective ways they are able to achieve this is to have you deny the significance or existence of your Real Self. The Demons want to think of yourself as insignificant – that you are nothing more than an accidental and meaningless collection of chemicals living in an accidental and meaningless world. They want you to believe you just slip into a void after you die and that there is no real meaning for anything you do or don't do in this world. As such, you should not fret over metaphysical questions and should instead dedicate your short, seemingly worthless existence to things like pursuing pleasure. When you embrace this kind of thinking, you become corrupted. You give the Demons exactly what they want. They in turn, laugh at your ignorance and stupidity as they strip you of the only thing of value you possess - your Real Self and its purpose.

At the metaphysical level, your Real Self is no less significant than the Real Selves of people you may consider important in this world. No, I’m not talking about equality. I’m talking about significance. The mission of a world leader may seem more significant than yours because it carries more weight and influence, but this weight and influence is only important at the physical level. At the spiritual level, your apparently modest mission is just as important as the mission of some powerful individual who possesses the power to shape and impact this world. A powerful person’s actions and development might affect the course of history more at the material level, but your seemingly trivial actions and development in this world might have greater impact on the course of development at the spiritual level.

Think of Jesus for a second. Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t believe in Him, but just think about Him for a second. He did not choose to enter this world as a king or Roman emperor, but as a man of the humblest origins possible. At the material level, He was an absolute nobody. The son of a carpenter, born into a small, conquered nation of people. He choose to be born without any notable privilege or influence. Yet even at a purely material level, His thoughts and actions during His brief lifetime have impacted the world far more than all the kings and Roman emperors of history combined. And at the spiritual level, His influence is immeasurable.

So don’t you think there might be a message in there about being a nobody? That essentially nobody is a nobody. That you only become a nobody when you believe yourself to be one?

How do you get out of the nobody trap?

Thinking. The first step is thinking. Once you recognize that nobody is a nobody, the rest at least has a chance of falling into place.

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We Have Storks Again

6/8/2019

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No, we are not expecting any new arrivals in my family. For the first time in nearly a decade, a pair of storks have built a nest in the village I call home.

Storks are ubiquitous in this part of the country. Pass through any village or small town in western Hungary and you are bound to see a stork nest perched upon a telephone poll or a chimney. Some settlements have have as many as four or five stork nests. They are an integral part of the rural scenery in this part of the world, and their presence is viewed as a sign of good fortune. When I purchased my home in Fertőendréd, I assumed the village had a stork nest somewhere, but I had no luck spotting it during my first walks around the village. I eventually asked some of my neighbors about it and was quickly informed that the storks had left a decade before and had not come back.

Like many other villages in this area, Fertőendréd had storks for as long as people could remember. The nest had been on the high chimney of the old manor located next to the village priory. Sadly, one day the chimney collapsed under the weight of the nest. The nest, and the eggs it contained, crashed to the ground below. The stork couple flew away and never returned.

Thus, for the past ten years, Fertőendréd has been one of the only villages in this area without storks. Shortly after I moved here, the mayor and the village council voted in favor of attempting to lure a stork family back to the settlement and had a large iron ring resembling a wagon wheel placed atop on of the telephone poles lining Main Street.

The following spring the villagers awaited the arrival of the storks, but no storks came. The iron ring remained empty high above the street. It quickly became a rather tragic and barren symbol of our collective misfortune. Two more springs came and went, but the iron stand remained empty. People eventually lost interest in the barren iron stork stand and gave up what little hope they had of ever attracting storks back to the village.

"Well, on the bright side, having no storks makes us unique," one of my neighbor's muttered to me one day as we passed under the empty stand.

This spring the storks returned, but Fertőendréd residents, yours truly among them, did not notice them until they had nearly completed their nest atop the iron ring. Needless to say, everyone in the village is quite pleased with this development, particularly the mayor and the village council who had been on the receiving end of some fairly imaginative barbs and criticisms for their funding of the stork nest stand three years prior.

I view the return of storks to this village as a good omen, both for me and for the settlement as a whole. Here's hoping the storks have a good summer and return next spring. And here's hoping they bring some fresh good luck with them every time they return from wintering in Africa.

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An Intentionally Incompetent System Is Evil By Default

6/7/2019

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Last week a Viking river cruise ship sailing on the Danube River in Budapest struck a smaller sightseeing craft called the Mermaid. The smaller boat sank immediately, taking practically every one of the South Korean tourists on board with it. As far as I know, only seven people of the 35 people on board survived. The death toll is now officially at fifteen, and there are still at least as many "missing." High river levels, murky water, and swift currents have hampered efforts to recover bodies, but one was recently discovered 100 kilometers downstream from the accident scene.

As tragic as all of this is, what makes it even more tragic is the piece of news I accidentally came across today that revealed the Viking river cruise ship's captain, who Hungarian authorities arrested shortly after the accident, had been involved in another boat collision in the Netherlands a mere two months before the fatal collision that sank the Mermaid in Budapest last week. Granted, the collision the captain was involved in back in April did not kill anyone, but there was damage to the ship and passengers did report minor injuries. Despite the incident, Viking Cruises decided it was perfectly acceptable to have the same captain continue sailing their fleet.

Now before I am accused of writing an outrage post - something I promised I would no longer do - allow me stop and say no more about this particular incident. What interests me more is what this incident reveals and how incidents like these are now quite commonplace and will become increasingly more common as we move forward. Why? Simple one word answer - incompetence. Not innocent or accidental incompetence, but purposive and managed incompetence.

Take a moment to consider the levels of incompetence this incident involves starting with the ship's captain and working our way up through the Viking Cruise company all the way to the various authorities and law enforcement agencies that all believed it was perfectly acceptable to allow a captain who had been involved in a fairly serious boat collision to continue sailing ships without as much as a whiff of question mark.

The level of incompetence plaguing everything in the West is at pathological levels. Never in the history of our civilization have so many unskilled, unimaginative, untalented, unqualified, and uninterested people occupied positions requiring skill, imagination, qualifications, and interest. This could not exist unless there was some intentional system-building mechanism behind it all. And there is. Imagine that. An entire system intentionally built on a "solid" foundation of incompetence.

Accidents can and do happen, even with qualified pros, but accidents such as the Mermaid sinking in Budapest should no longer be regarded as accidents, but rather as incidents; incidents that reveal a massive system of stupidity, apathy, irresponsibility, and ineptitude. Incidents such as the Mermaid sinking in Budapest will only increase as each carefully placed domino of deficiency falls and crashes into the one placed beside it. So prepare yourself for more boats sinking, bridges collapsing, airplanes crashing, and countless other unimaginable horrors as the unqualified and inadequate continue to place their brethren into all sorts of positions where people's health and lives are at stake.

This is not about inept people in a good, functioning, competent system. This is about inept people purposefully congesting an evil, malfunctioning, incompetent system with useless and inadequate people and policies. This systemic incompetence goes out of its way to interfere with the few competent people left in the system, the same people who have somehow managed to keep it all from descending into chaos.

Think of it as plate spinning. The competent within the evil, incompetent system can keep the plates spinning as long as the number of plates and the distances between them are manageable. But with each passing day, the number of plates increases, and the distances between the rods on which the plates are perched grows wider. Added to this is an army of useless zombies who do little more than knock the plates from the rods, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally.

It's too much. The Good people are not be able to keep up. Many plates are slowing down and starting to wobble.

Brace yourself for more crashing plates. They're coming.

Update: Shortly after I finished writing this post, Viking Cruises released a statement claiming the captain responsible for the crash on the Danube River had not been in charge of the ship involved in the accident in the Netherlands. Viking Cruises claimed the captain in question had been on the vessel in Holland, but had not been serving as that ship's captain at the time.

Apparently, Viking Cruises believes this information will somehow make them look better, which is presumably why they released it to the media. Yet if you take a moment to consider this statement it in fact accomplishes little more than support my idea of intentional systemic incompetence.

Viking Cruises has admitted it has more than one inept captain manning its fleet. This proves the Danube disaster captain is not a one-off event - that there are in fact probably many incompetent captains at the company. In addition, by releasing this statement to the public in the hopes it will somehow cast the company in a better light suggests the PR people at Viking Cruises are also incredibly dim and inept, despite their university degrees in communications.

It's systemic. Period.

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No Brainer

6/6/2019

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Today was one of those "not in enough hours in the day" sort of days. This evening I had to choose between composing a blog post or playing with my son. The brevity of this post should indicate which I ended up choosing. I will make up tomorrow for it by either writing a substantial post or double posting.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pretend I'm Godzilla and attack the Lego Tokyo my son has built in his bedroom. My son, in turn, will nobly attempt to defend the city with a wide range of weapons including a fleet of paper airplanes, assorted stuffed animals, and a rapid-fire Nerf gun.

Something tells me that despite my best efforts Tokyo will likely survive and live to see the morning light.

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