The "Giants", the "Titans", and the Nephilim

 We're watching a series on Netflix called "Ragnarok". It's pretty good. It's dubbed English over the original Norwegian audio, but they seem to use superior technology for mixing the new audio compared to other dubbed series--you can barely tell it's dubbed. The story is a very old, oft repeated tale with a few adornments.

In the Norse mythology there is a race of god-like beings called "giants" that are in conflict with the gods like Thor. This story element is similar to the "Titans" in Greek mythology, and even has a mention in the Bible in the chapters and verses in Genesis about the Nephilim. "There were giants on the Earth in those days". That is fleshed out more in the book of Enoch.

There's even an encounter in the Bible between King David and a "Giant" who he kills with his sling.

Are all these different mythologies talking about the same thing? Probably. What exactly were they talking about?

Let's take a completely different form of mythology and folk belief to try to understand what the story could even mean. Some people in India think a dog bite can cause "puppy pregnancy". A dog bites you, you become "pregnant" with puppies, then die... so it seems to be a folk story that encodes the concept of rabies. If you think about the puppy pregnancy story for a while, you'll see it actually gets a lot "right". It's like a weird hysterical telling of the "scientific" version of rabies.

The scientific storyline of rabies is an animal bite contains some infectious agent that gets into the blood through broken skin; it's not that different of a concept from getting "pregnant" IRL. The "puppies" grow in the victim, the same way the invading germs do. Rabies culminates in death--the sacrifice of the "host". He or she becomes the parent of the disease "baby" really. In short, there's some actual information in the puppy pregnancy story.

There's probably information in the "Giants" stories, too. What is it exactly? It's pretty hard to say. By the way, this set of tales is the basis of countless movies and TV shows, especially in the sci-fi genre.

It's noteworthy that the term "giant" is used in the various mythologies, which seem to share a common source. In modern usage, "giant" can be applied in different ways. Literally, as in a very tall man can be considered a "giant", or figuratively as in a "giant of industry" who might be a literal short and small man. I think there's no way to reverse engineer the meaning of that particular description from the available sources.

It's noteworthy that the "giants" are in conflict with the "new gods" in the mythologies and in fact there is an overt war.

It's also noteworthy that the conflict takes place on or around the time of a great flood.

Stupornova

 As civilizations progress, they get more "complex", that is, more inter-related tasks are required for them to function. At the same time, the tasks get easier to accomplish physically and mentally. Civilization makes life easier for the people who live within it.

These two factors are the heat and gravity in a star. Gravity causes fusion of light elements like hydrogen in a star, which in turn release heat and light and other forms of radiation. The heat of fusion counter-acts the force of gravity and prevents the star from entirely collapsing and either exploding, or forming a black hole, or neutron star.

Once the lighter elements are all used up, though, the fusion process eventually creates Iron, which actually absorbs heat, then the star collapses catastrophically and explodes.

The complexity of a civilization eventually outstrips the ability of the civilization to supply people to service it because the civilization keeps making people dumber. I don't think this is caused by genetics. It's caused by ease and comfort and habit. There's probably nothing in the civilization that can forestall the degradation.

Eventually you get the "fusing iron" moment in the civilization where the catastrophic collapse happens. I think we're there right now. Maybe it happened earlier in this century. I'll say 2005 was the crossover.

Neoliberalism Failed

We've been living with the "neoliberals" for at least 50 years. They've steadily accrued more power and control with each passing decade. They're basically white collar criminals: embezzlers and financial scammers, primarily, that run corporations and the government. It's really the "business plot" from the 1930s that's been institutionalized. Lots of people are involved and at least passively support the system, mainly from confusion about what it actually is.

Several "liberals" for example, support the system because it says it's about equality and helping gays and the environment, and poor people, etc... That rhetoric doesn't match the reality. The neoliberal system exploits workers in Asia or other countries around the world, and builds factories in regions with no environmental regulations, then ships manufactured goods to the United States and other western nations using the dirtiest, cheapest fuel available to power ships.

The "neoliberals" just tried to force everyone in the world to take a concoction with unknown long term side effects, and enacted a series of useless policies to attempt to control the spread of a disease. None of that worked. Not even a little bit. However, some corporations made record profits and revenues.

Finally, at long last, some people, most visibly the truckers in Canada, are standing up to this system, and many people are just leaving it behind as a mass of workers dropped out of the corporate workforce. All of this is a vote of no confidence in the dirtbag politicians who pretend to "govern" countries for "the people", when in reality they're bribed and blackmailed employees, and more importantly it's a vote of no confidence in the system itself.

All this has happened before in history--many times over--and the outcomes have varied. The attempt to petition and reform the government on behalf of the people in Canada will probably "fail", but then more people will understand that the corruption is wide and deep and irreversible and they'll have to move on from there. People in the USA are in the same boat. The "populist" movement of the past several years was mostly a fraud, that is, the official manifestation of it, the Trump presidency, was a 100% fraudulent entity, but the people's motives are true.

The populists seem to be the only people capable of learning and growth in conceptual understanding. Since they're trying to will a change into being they're forced into experimentation and learning. They tried "voting for an outsider", but got scammed. Quite a few of those people, judging by comments sections on YouTube and other web sites, realize Trump is a fraud. Now they're left to fed for themselves. They're really all in a new frontier and will have to come up with creative solutions for the government and corporate corruption.

The people who are stuck in the neoliberal system are going to stagnate and wither personally as the vampires on the top of the pile continue to drain them while they promise a utopia of equality and environmental grenliness.

Justin Trudeau's Half Brother Says He's a Puppet/Slave

The western world seems to be an oligarchy with a potemkin village/rump parliament string of governments carrying out its orders. Justin Trudeau's half brother asserted that model is actually correct.

There's an interview where he says as much. Link

Game-ified Reality and Covid

Covid is the latest in a long line of "scams". I think a better name than scam is "game". Most of our human life, especially in developed countries, is really a game version of reality. People piss their entire life away on a series of stupid delusions: "a career", money is real, religion, patriotism, etc... All of that stuff is a form of mass hysteria. Placing undue value on luxury goods is a great example of this distortion of reality, e.g. "diamonds are valuable".

The people who live outside these games and delusions are deemed insane. A guy like Johnny Appleseed, for example, is cited as a crank weirdo, or a person like Richard Proenneke is cited as extreme or mal-adjusted to the fraud/game.

The novel thing about the covid scam is so many people see it's a fraud. We were born into the patriotism game in the USA, so don't see it's a scam. We don't see the fake Roman and Greek and Egyptian style buildings in Washington as a con-man's ruse. To us, they were there "forever". The people living at the time of the revolution, though, realized it was just another government. The Whiskey Rebellion is one proof of that.

Emperor's New Clothes Moment for Biden Administration

Reporters from left wing media outlets recently publicly scoffed at the Biden administrations claims about Russian actions in Ukraine and a supposed special forces raid against an "ISIS leader".

I think there's a general loss of confidence in the US federal government. The "right" wing already disliked the Biden administration intensely. Now the "left" is chiming in.

Some talking head TV "left" wing people recently questioned the covid insanity too, finally.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next weeks.

Luxury Goods Insanity

Thousands of years ago in the bronze age, a large trade network moved the gemstone amber around the world. Apparently people were obsessed with amber. Today, nobody cares about it. Most people wouldn't even notice an amber gemstone if it were mixed into a box of other stuff in their attic. It has some value to collectors, but that's it. I have no idea how much amber is worth per ounce or even if ounces is the appropriate unit of pricing.

In the 17th century, beaver pelts were prized. Beaver clothing, like hats and gloves, was the rage in old Europe. If you didn't have a beaver hat, you were trash. The beaver trade sparked wars and conflict for decades. Thousands of people died over it. Entire native tribes in the new world were wiped out by other tribes in an attempt to control the commodity. The beaver population in the Hudson River valley was wiped out. Eventually people got tired of wearing beaver skins on their heads, though, and the trade died out.

The mass market for diamonds was only established in the 19th century after the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa. It became a part of the wedding ritual after mass advertising convinced women that it was a good idea for their future husband to blow several months of his pay on a shiny rock when they were just starting out in life.

In each of these cases, some arbitrary item became highly prized probably through advertising. Some arbitrary item ended up as a mark of social status. Of the three examples above, beaver pelts probably had the highest utility. Amber is a sparkly trinket. Diamonds, outside the context of industrial abrasive use, are also sparkly trinkets.

People have a built in conformity mechanism that enables random items to become a luxury commodity. It's the same mechanism that turns them into hysterical retards about cold and flu season. It's an extremely bad feature.