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Finally Trapped The Marten

8/19/2020

Stone martens (Martes foina), also known as beech martens or house martens, are quite a problem here in western Hungary. Landing somewhere between weasel and ferret in terms of appearance, beech martens can be rather 'cute', but there is nothing cute about the damage martens can do to houses and automobiles, both of which they are extremely fond of visiting in the middle of the night.

For example, about a year ago a marten chewed through the brake fluid line of my neighbor's BMW. My neighbor only became aware of the damage after he was forced to bring the car to a screeching halt via the handbrake. At around the same time, I began to notice muddy paw prints on my own vehicle every morning. A little later, I discovered marten droppings in my attic. My father and I immediately went out and purchased a trap and placed it in the attic.

After that, I waited. And waited. The marten continued to visit my attic and perform moonlit tap dances on the hood of my car, but it showed absolutely no interest in the trap. I tried different baits; nothing worked. I even lay trail of bait in the attic in an attempt to lure the marten into the trap. Nada. After about four months, I accepted defeat and stop baiting the trap.

Then, about a week ago, I heard strange noises emanating from the attic. It took me a few seconds to remember the unbaited trap I had left up there; once I did, I went upstairs not knowing what I would find. Well, it turns out the best bait is no bait at all. It took a year, but the sly marten finally found its way into the little metal prison I had set for it.

The culprit.

Shortly after I had purchased the trap, I asked a neighbor what I should do with the marten if I managed to trap it.

"Submerge the cage in the river," he said gruffly without a trace of compassion in his voice, "wait ten minutes, and then empty the trap."

Having once been an avid hunter, I have no qualm with killing animals, especially pests, but as I stared at the marten in the trap, I couldn't find it my heart to exterminate it. Instead, I loaded it into my car (martens may look cute, but boy do they smell), drove four or five kilometers to an open field, and released the marten into some thickets of brush. It took off like a bullet and scampered out of sight in the tall grass a few meters from where I stood.

A few days later, I noticed paw prints on my car again. I sighed. Probably a different marten, which means I have won a battle, but not the war.

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Against Global Thinking - An Excellent Post By JM Smith

8/18/2020

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Over at the Orthosphere, JM Smith has posted an incisive criticism that effectively dismantles the misguided, dishonest, and pernicious mindset that nurtures and promotes 'global thinking', which has been extolled as one of the the highest virtues to which an individual can aspire in our modern world.

More precisely, 'global thinking' has taken on the contours of a dictum, one pushed and promulgated by our current totalitarian rulers who demand individuals disregard the reality of the personal and local in favor of the unreality of the impersonal and global.

Smith's post is a must-read, especially now in this time of 'pandemic crisis' when it appears all possible 'solutions' must come packaged within the framework of 'global thinking.'

Some excerpts:

Although I have for many years taught a college course on World Regional Geography, I have never once admonished my students to “think globally.” This is because no individual is capable of a global thought that is not either commonplace, fatuous, arrogant, tyrannical or false, and even the brightest college students are not exempt from this this humiliating truth.

And this is not all. No individual is capable of a serious global thought, but neither are global thoughts needed from any individual. Every faraway place you might think of is well supplied with people just as intelligent and well-meaning as you are, and these people are far, far more intimately acquainted with local circumstances. If the apparent problems of that faraway place were susceptible to the solutions that occur to you while you are swinging in your hammock, or smoking your pipe, or astonishing your friends with your intelligent compassion, they would long ago have been solved in precisely that way.

“Thinking globally” is a vice, not a virtue, and we are none of us obligated to think or act otherwise. “Global thinkers” pride themselves on entertaining thoughts that are either commonplace, fatuous, arrogant, tyrannical or false, and they betray a profound contempt for the capacity of foreigners to manage their own affairs. Indulgence in these vanities requires them to shirk their real duties to their families, vocations and local communities. Therefore, you should not fall for the flimflam of these moral poseurs who, like Dickens’ Mrs, Jellyby, have “a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if . . . they could see nothing nearer than Africa!”

Read the rest here.

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Mednyánszky's Studies of Death (And New Life)

8/17/2020

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As readers of this blog know, I hold László Mednyánszky to be among Hungary's best if not the best landscape painter, but the Wandering Baron also created many portraits, studies, and scenes. As is the case with many painters, Mednyánszky was particularly interested in death and addressed the theme in a great many sketches, studies, and finished pieces.

His treatment of the subject ranges from the macabre to the mournful. Nevertheless, his depictions of these aspects do not appear to reflect his own views of death and seem instead to focus on the common emotions and beliefs people generally display or attribute to death. At the risk of brandishing an unintended pun, I would say some of his paintings of corpses exude the tranquility of still life; others inspire a deep sadness, perhaps even dread. All the same, I do not believe Mednyánszky's personal interest in death as a subject centers upon a morbid fascination or grim loathing. On the contrary, I feel the Wandering Baron understood that death was a transition - one which revealed the possibility of resurrected life (as his study, Allegory of Death and New Life - see final image below - clearly shows).

Note: Mednyánszky was a master of light in his landscapes, so much so they could be referred to as lightscapes rather than landscapes. By contrast, the light in his death paintings is diffuse and drab. The appearance of any light beyond that must be 'revealed'. Also, note the dull browns and earth tones - the very opposite of the vivid, striking palates he employed in most of his landscapes.

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Nobody Ever Did That With Influenza - Bruce Charlton's Must Read Analysis of the Birdemic 'Crisis'

8/17/2020

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Bruce Charlton has written a stellar and sobering analysis of our current birdemic 'crisis' in which he compares the 'deadly' birdemic to influenza and pertinently examines why the measures and actions that have been initiated for the birdemic have never been initiated to combat influenza.

It is worth noting that Dr. Charlton not only predicted the occurrence of a global coup attempt mere months before it happened, he was one of the first, if not the first, to recognize the birdemic for what it truly is.

I have commented before, from a scientific perspective, how the application of microscopic attention to scientific observations or theories that you want to reject is a common form of dishonesty; and most modern professional-researchers (self-styled 'scientists') are neither intelligent, nor competent, nor truth-seeking enough to understand this. Indeed, they are deeply-invested-in Not understanding it.

We see the inverse side of this phenomenon in relation to the birdemic (and other phenomena that the media wants us to regard as significant, common, universal - such as 'racism' or 'global warming'...).

This works by putting a microscope onto one thing, but not another; thereby psychologically amplifying one but not the other phenomenon, making it occupy grossly disproportionate attention.

Compare the birdemic with a bad influenza year, such as 2014-15 or 2017-18. A truthful, truth-seeking comparison of the death rates suggests that the birdemic and flu are not-significantly-different in dangerousness.

However; the microscope has been applied to every aspect of the birdemic, but not to flu - and this produces so much distortion that a detailed comparison is (if we are honest) impossible.

We can only say that we could not be confident that there was any significant difference in overall mortality.

However, nobody with power/ influence is interested in flu.

The vast majority of people who read my blog also read Bruce Charlton's Notions; however, I urge those who might not visit Notions regularly to read the rest of Dr. Charlton's important post here.

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Global Totalitarianism: Gradually, Then Suddenly

8/15/2020

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“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
- from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, bold added

If someone in the not-too-distant future were to ask me how the world became a global dictatorship, I imagine I would respond in the same manner as Mike in the excerpt above.

Two ways. Gradually then suddenly.

If pressed for details, I could outline the gradually against the contours of my own life and point out the countless baby steps the Establishment took to achieve their long-term objectives; to the thousand little cuts they inflicted upon us - whittling us down; bleeding the life out of us. And then when it seemed there were no more steps to take, no more slivers to slice off, no blood left to drain . . . it happened.

Everyone in the world was labeled a biohazard. We were declared an immense threat to each other and the planet. The peril we posed was so great that it required the swift installation of global governance, which was the only way to ensure the implementation of a safe and just world. Avalanches of other suddenlies quickly followed, burying us where we stood.

Thing is, Mike from The Sun Also Rises knew what the suddenly was when it happened to him. He was painfully aware of his circumstances, and he was also painfully aware of the process that had led him there.

Will I be able to tell my not-too-distant-future enquirer the same about the majority of modern people in the world?

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Humana Communitas And The Anti-Christian Vision of Heaven on Earth

8/13/2020

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"In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the Tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth."

I believe the passage above, taken from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, perfectly encapsulates the struggle between Christianity and socialism -the metaphysical war between those who promulgated mounting to heaven from earth and those who strove to establish heaven on earth. The war was drawn out over centuries, but for all intents and purposes, it is now over. Socialism has succeeded in thoroughly subverting and trouncing Christianity – at least the major forms of organized, institutional Christianity. As far as I know, all major Christian denominations and churches have chosen to prioritize setting up heaven on earth over mounting to heaven from earth, which makes one wonder if the major Christian denominations really believe in the existence of God and immortality at all.

To suggest the major Christian churches no longer really believe in the existence of God and immortality is tantamount to blasphemy. Perhaps it is blasphemy to suggest such a thing. After all, a great many people within the various Christian denominations clearly do believe in God and immortality, but these people rarely, if ever, represent the official positions of their respective institutions, all of which are clearly more interested in creating heaven on earth than they are in mounting to heaven from earth. In fact, it has to come to the point where it is extremely difficult to differentiate the communications a Christian church releases from the communications released by a secular/atheist, socialist organization – and by socialist organization I am referring to all governments, businesses, global corporations, international forums, NGOs, universities, etc.

Case in point, the much (and rightly) criticized Humana Communitas in the Age of Pandemic: Untimely Meditations on Life’s Rebirth, which the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life released on July 22, 2020. A great deal of the criticism the document has drawn has concentrated the text’s glaring lack of reference to God, Jesus Christ, and faith (though the author goes out of his way to laud the World Health Organization to the stars). Many also clearly recognized and identified the document’s secular, bureaucratic tone and style of text as being eerily similar to the kind of tone and style that taints documents released by globalist organizations such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. What few seemed to note, however, is just how anti-Christian the Humana Commnunitas is. More specifically, how well the content of the document aligns with the current secular agendas to reorder the world in response to the birdemic crisis.

I’m not going to bother to do any sort comparison analysis in this post, but that doesn’t mean you should take my word for what I have expressed above. Instead, take a few moments, browse the Humana Communitas and make your through one or more of the WEF’s articles on the Great Reset. The similarities are depressing. Building the Tower of Babel; establishing heaven here on earth.

Both sources agree the birdemic has provided the ideal circumstances for the establishment of this heaven on earth – for a community of human family, a safe and just world – which will, of course, require ‘global governance’, new ‘mindsets’, ‘lifestyle changes’, and a ‘moral conversion’ - all of which can be achieved without Christ, God, and faith.

In my mind, documents like the Humana Communitas provides a clear response to the atheistic question: Attaining heaven on earth is far more important than attaining heaven from earth.

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A Life That Is Atomized, Comfortable, Sinful, Meaningless, and Long

8/12/2020

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When I take a cursory glance at the past three or four centuries of Western history, I detect the occasionally wavering but nonetheless steady ambition to transform human life for the majority of people from something poor, nasty, brutish, and short into something affluence, pleasant, civilized, and long. Overall, I believe the ambition was a noble one, but only within the context and framework of a Christian worldview because the Christian worldview is the only one that can properly structure these much sought after quality of life improvements. Perhaps the impetus to improve life quality for the general population in the West was fueled by the hope that such improvements in material quality would lead to an improvement in spiritual and religious quality.

At first glance, this seems incorrect. After all, it could be argued the general population of the West was at its most spiritual and religious when living standards for the average person were quite low, and that rising standards of living demonstrate an inverse relationship to religion. In short, increases in material comfort and wealth led to decreases in spirituality and religion. To me, it seems the opposite should have occurred, if not immediately, then perhaps sometime shortly after the Industrial Revolution. The extra wealth, time, and freedoms rising standards of living provided the average person should have been invested into spiritual and religious growth. Instead, the increases in material wealth and comfort were invested into the acquisition and enjoyment of more material wealth and comfort at the expense of spiritual and religious growth.

Of course, what I have stated above is a sweeping generalization of the grossest kind, and Western history is filled with various religious movements that attempted to buck this trend through various forms of asceticism, but I think these religious impulses toward severe material abstinence amounted to little more than regressive reactions against the weakening of religion in the face of the strengthening of the material in the minds of men. In my mind, rising standards of living themselves were not the cause of the wrong turn; the wrong turn occurred when people became seemingly incapable of framing rising standards of living within the required context of religion.

The inverse relationship between religion and material comfort and wealth is often presented within an either/or paradigm, a paradigm that is apparently supported by the Synoptic Gospels, especially the passages dealing with serving two masters and rich men getting into heaven. Heaven was an easy sell when life for the average Westerner was poor, brutish, and short. Denied means or access to material comfort and wealth during mortal life, heaven became a sort of panacea and reward for the afterlife. The rich, on the other hand, could enjoy a sort of heaven on earth, but this enjoyment put their chances of getting to heaven at risk.

This sort of either/or framing never made much sense to me. As far as I'm concerned, the dichotomy of a high standard of living and religion is a false. The either/or division it has created should have been short-lived, and it should have given birth to the harmony of 'and'. Generally affluent, pleasant, civilized, and long mortal lives should have manifested generally deeper, more intense, more meaningful, and purposeful religious lives, but this required a radical shift in human consciousness, a radical shift that did not occur and has still not occurred. This radical shift should have entailed some sort of recognition that increases in material comfort and wealth, though good, provide human life no real meaning or purpose, as well as the understanding that these increases in material comfort and wealth are positively poisonous to the soul once the framework of religion is discarded.

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Short Summer Break From Blogging

8/5/2020

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My brain has been running on fumes these past few days. In light of this, I have decided to take a short break from blogging. I plan to return in a week or so.

Until then . . .

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The Great Reset Seeks To Usher In A World In Which Nobody Will Want To Escape The Gulag

8/4/2020

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn's voluminous and damning magnus opus The Gulag Archipelago essentially documents the existence and workings of a smaller prison system embedded within a larger prison system. The larger prison system was comprised of all the social, political, and economic infrastructure and policies that made up the Soviet Union, while the smaller prison system was made up of the various forced-labor camps housing those who had violated the social, political, and economic policies of the larger prison camp. Provable transgressions against the Soviet Union and the communist cause more or less guaranteed removal from the larger prison system of general society, but this by no means meant every incarcerated gulag prisoner had been guilty of a indictable offense. On the contrary, Soviet gulags often overflowed with innocent people who could not understand why they had been singled out from the general prison population of the state and subsequently sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor.

Most citizens of the Soviet Union understood that they were fundamentally prisoners of a totalitarian state; and they were perpetually reminded of this reality through the steady diet of decrees, regulations, restrictions, shortages, bureaucracy, denouncements, and propaganda that burdened their day-to-day lives. Nevertheless, given the choice, I suspect all Soviet citizens would have chosen to remain in the larger prison system of Soviet society over the smaller prison system of the gulags. Living in Soviet society entailed a great degree humiliation and suffering - the gulag, on the other hand, was nothing but humiliation and suffering.

As oppressive and limiting as the Soviet Union was, it still contained small pockets of freedom and happiness. You could, theoretically at least, work in a vocation in which you demonstrated aptitude or talent. If you possessed athletic ability, there was a chance you could be recruited into one of the state's athletic programs. You could enjoy small pleasures like a walk in the park, and so forth. If you welcomed risk, you could still get your hands on banned books and novels or other forms of art. You could pray and read the Bible in the privacy of your own home. You could attempt to defect or escape to the West or some other part of the world.

If you happened to be arrested, all of that disappeared. Life in the smaller prison system of the gulags was harsh and bleak. Whatever freedom you could experience was generally restricted to the space in your heart and the space between your ears. Simply put, the difference between Soviet society and the gulag was the difference between near-total slavery and total slavery.

Earlier totalitarian regimes used concentration camps and gulags to maintain their power. The gulags served as a reminder - no matter how bad things became in society, it was infinitely better than being imprisoned in a forced labor camp. Thus, the social engineering the Soviets managed to achieve was underpinned by the threat of brute force and total enslavement.

Through their Great Reset Agenda, our current totalitarian technocrats are implementing a more insidious form of social engineering to fortify their black iron prison and enslave the world - a form of social engineering that will convince its global citizens to willingly relinquish their current state of near-total slavery in favor of total slavery, which is being packaged and sold as a 'safe and just space for humanity.'

Call me a pessimist, but I feel the Establishment has an excellent chance of pushing this agenda through.* For starters, hardly anyone realizes that a global totalitarian coup has already taken place. The change was so swift, dramatic, and comprehensive that even those who recognized what was unfolding could barely keep up with the pace of events, let alone mobilize or offer resistance against it. As for everyone else - well, most are still waiting for a return to normal. But there will be no return to normal. On the contrary, our global dictators are already feverishly framing the old 'normal' as both unsustainable and undesirable.

What they offer instead is a benevolently-sounding new normal - a more fair, sustainable, and resilient future founded upon a new social contract centered on social justice, economic equity, racial equality, and environmental protection. This new normal will require drastic 'lifestyle changes' and monumental shifts in human thinking and behavior from individuals and a complete reconceptualization of civilization from all the world's nations. Technology will be at the heart of this 'safe and just space for humanity', and will form the core of a microsurveillance social credit system through which citizens of the world will be rewarded for good behavior.

Unlike the Soviet Union, the Great Reset's 'safe and just space for humanity' will not require the brute force of a small prison system to exist because 'the safe and just space for humanity' will become a comprehensive and all-encompassing prison in of itself - the type of prison most will not even recognize as a prison. And even if people do recognize it as a prison, they will not wish to escape it for the simple reason that life outside the safe and just space will be regarded as infinitely worse. In this sense, the Establishment is working to flip the Soviet model on its head. Soviet citizens feared the gulag because they knew it would increase their suffering; modern citizens will be conditioned to believe suffering increases beyond the gulag.

Ignorance is what separates the vast majority of people today from citizens of the former Soviet Union. Most modern people do not realize or will not accept that they had been living in near total-slavery before the birdemic and are now inching toward a world of total slavery. On the contrary, many will welcome the 'safe and just space for humanity' the Establishment proposes as an opportunity for a better, safer life. I suspect the majority of the West will gladly surrender whatever small freedoms they possess for the promise a more resilient, secure, and equitable future.

The few who do resist will be forced into circumstances where resistance will not only be futile, but utterly unworkable. In the here and now it has become impossible to buy groceries in a shop unless you wear a mask (in most places in the West). Now imagine how impossible shopping for food becomes if you have been 'deactivated' from a digital currency system. Imagine that and you start to get a sense of the kinds of tricks our technocratic tyrants are capable of pulling.

I suspect most will never consider escaping the open air concentration camp the world has become for the simple reason that they like it, crave it, and want more of it. As for the rest of us, any thoughts of physical escape will likely be tempered by the rather cold and harsh reality of having nowhere to go.

Considering the above, the current and developing global totalitarianism appears to be far worse than the totalitarianism people had to endure in the Soviet Union. True, we have not experienced mass starvation and mass executions (yet), but we are slowly being deprived of the state of near-total slavery - what most people refer to as 'the normal' - that Soviet citizens managed to cling to even during the darkest days of Stalin's reign. This realization should alert us to the freedoms that cannot be stolen from us, and motivate us to cultivate and defend those freedoms with every ounce of our being.

* The Great Reset Agenda may fail for a variety of reasons. For example, the Establishment may push the economic meltdown they are currently orchestrating too far and, thereby, precipitate full-out system failure. Another possibility is a sudden upsurge of good within the otherwise evilly-motivated aparachicks that helped usher in the global coup. Collective armed resistance and mobilization against the agenda is a possibility, but is increasingly proving improbable. Collective spiritual, more specifically Christian, revival is another, albeit extremely faint, possible, but once again improbable, obstacle. In light of all of the above and given current circumstances, the odds for the reset agenda, or some similar agenda succeeding, are quite favorable.

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Johnny's In London Talking About The Hopelessness: Stray Thoughts About Mike Leigh's "Naked"

8/2/2020

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This is not a film recommendation; I am merely sharing some thoughts.

I classify Mike Leigh's 1993 film Naked as one of those I hate liking. When I saw the film for the first time shortly after its release, I distinctly remember harboring a favorable impression of it as I was leaving the movie theater, but this acclamatory assessment was simultaneously tempered by a sense of deep revulsion. Though it was an odd sensation to experience, I was not at all surprised by this contradictory response. Though I enjoyed the brilliant acting, clever screenwriting, and effective cinematography, I was repulsed by the world Mike Leigh depicts in the film.

The nausea I experienced did not stem from any gratuitousness or insincerity on Leigh's part, but rather from an acknowledgement of the film's jolting and accurate depiction of contemporary nihilism, alienation, loneliness, and despair. The spiritual darkness and hopelessness Leigh presents is extremely cutting and relevant, and I suspect this underlying darkness and hopelessness has only grown darker and more hopeless in the twenty-seven years since the film's release.

Whether exposure to darkness can help guide one toward the light is questionable. At the same time, being oblivious to the spiritual murk that masquerades as modern society probably does more harm than good in terms of recognizing and remaining in the light. Of course, Leigh offers the viewer very little in the way of light in this film. Cinematographically, the vast majority of the scenes are draped in inky tones of night and shadow; and the daytimes scenes are burdened by diffused, oppressive grayness utterly unblessed by even the slightest ray of sunshine. The locations feel cramped and closed, creating a sense of physical and metaphysical claustrophobia - tight stairwells, narrow alleyways, decaying stretches of urban wasteland. Whatever slivers of metaphysical light manage to penetrate the shadows are quickly eclipsed by the shadows of hopelessness.

The characters themselves exist in a vicious world of predator and prey. Most appear lost and zombified. Grounded in crushing materialism, they are, nonetheless, completely disconnected from the physical places they refer to as homes; unaware and unattached to any of the objects surrounding them. All are starved for love and authentic human connection, yet their attempts to attain these ultimately makes them either victims or victimizers. Johnny, the Mancunian main character, rips through this depressing ensemble of soul-wounded characters like a hurricane. Intellectual and intense, this loquacious, failed-Romantic anti-hero possesses enough perspicacity to pierce through the lies and listlessness of the modern world, but his overreliance on his intellect ultimately leads him into a metaphysical dead end.

Convinced humanity is merely a stage in the evolutionary ladder toward the eventual appearance of form of theosis in the guise of pure, God-like consciousness, Johnny finds no meaning or purpose for contemporary human life outside of this evolutionary role. Put another way, humanity's sole purpose is to prepare the way for an eventual higher form of being - a higher form of being in which humanity's only creative role is to passively live out its own determined, physical existence until the coming of the apocalypse, which will usher in the beginning of the next stage of evolution toward pure consciousness.

The inherent hopelessness of these metaphysical assumptions bleed into the whole film and are reflected by every downcast, deprived, and derelict character Johnny encounters on his pseudo Odyssey around London. Of course, the very notion of metaphysical assumptions are beyond the scope of most of the people Johnny meets, with the only exception being Brian, the middle-aged security guard who grants Johnny a few hours of reprieve from the cold and damp London night. Working in what Johnny describes as 'the most tedious job in England', Brian guards an empty building and spends the majority of each night contemplating the future while the city around him sleeps. Convinced his life has meaning, and that this meaning resides somewhere in the future, Brian ultimately rejects the hopelessness Johnny describes in a memorable metaphysical tirade laced with conspiratorial flourishes.

Over breakfast at a café the following morning, Brian quietly gives Johnny the advice the younger man so sorely needs. Don't waste your life. The words fall on deaf ears, for as far as Johnny is concerned life is already a waste. Thinking a waste cannot be wasted amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking in his mind.

The scene below contains the metaphysical tirade mentioned above. As far as I'm concerned, it's an excellent scene, even if the message it presents is anything but.

Warning: The clip below contains a fair bit of swearing.

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