Odin and The Runes Myth

A version of Germanic mythology was preserved in Iceland and is now called "Norse Mythology", which is just a handful of stories that are quite a bit different in tone and content than classical world myths, like the Greek Mythology and the jumble of Mediterranean stories that is Jewish mythology.

Many of the Norse stories are quite obscure and are more of a puzzle for the reader to contemplate than some description of what "is" encoded in fictional form. The story of the Runes is one example. Odin hangs upside down from the world tree for 9 days and nights to receive the runes. 

What does "hang upside down" from the world tree mean? One possible interpretation is astronomical. For people who live far enough north, the sun does not rise above the horizon around the winter solstice. Most of the places people currently live in Norway and Sweden, though, don't experience days of nights around the solstice. Another interpretation is it's a parallel version of the human sacrifices the germanic peoples performed many centuries ago where they hung people from trees as an offering to their gods.

In the myth, Odin's sacrifice is like "Neo" in the matrix, he dies and "Wakes up" to the reality of the world of runes, i.e. symbols. However, as I discussed in previous posts, the symbol world/world of ego is the world of delusion.

The Ego Delusion, Political Retards, and Control Freaks

We watched all of the seasons of the TV show Heartland over the past few years. It's a pretty sappy Canadian TV drama about a horse farm in Alberta, CA that centers on a woman who's a "horse whisperer". I give the show credit for sticking to its main big theme, which is hinted at by the title, the quality of a person's life is largely determined by "their heart" rather than "their head". The "right choice" in many situations is not the calculated choice, nor the choice that advances a career or success or whatever.

The show has been on for many seasons, so probably hundreds of actors portrayed roles in the series. There have been hero characters and villains and everybody in between. The perennial worst character in the show, IMO, is the "Lou" character (actually a woman) portrayed by Michelle Morgan. In the show, Lou went and got an MBA and moved to New York City to pursue a career in MBA-ing business stuff and she reluctantly returns to the Heartland ranch after her mother dies.

The "Lou" character is basically a control freak ego-driven individual. She remains such in spite of learning on countless occasions that her approach to life sucks and if anything she gets worse and worse with each season. I think that character is a useful depiction of a person who lives entirely in "the matrix" of their symbolic/verbal "I" delusion.  The producers of the show keep "Lou" awful in season after season while most of the other characters in the show evolved and grew.

The world of politics is really largely an attempt by control freak ego-driven people like Lou to force others to live in a real world embodiment of the "Lou" type inner world matrix. It's some version of keeping up with the Joneses. The keeping up with the joneses person imagines what their peer is thinking, then acts according to that, or feels bad or good according to an utterly delusional fantasy about something absurd like owning some particular car, or lawn maintenance or having a stain on their shirt, or their driveway, or for women they might feel envy if their girlfriend got a huge diamond ring, or necklace or something.

Politics is the keeping up with the Joneses mentality metastasized into real life by laws and force of punishment. It makes sense that politicians are the worst people in every jurisdiction. In fact, in the Heartland show, Lou becomes the mayor of her small town and is predictably horrible in the job.

Anyway, Heartland repeatedly contrasts the clownish ego fantasy world and "real life", that is, the "heart" life.

"The Matrix" Misses the Main Point

The Matrix is one of my favorite movies. It made quite an impression on me when I first saw it. Since then, I've basically been trying to get out of "the matrix". The movies, though, portray the successful matrix escape as realizing the matrix is fake, then becoming superhuman as a result both in the matrix and in real life, which is a really dopey conclusion.

"The Matrix" is quite real and I think the portrayal of the concept in the first movie is useful. However, the matrix world isn't a shared delusional universe, like a computer game, it's an individual's delusion. Most people have an inner-world Thomas Anderson, and that character is completely fictional. There's (probably) no overlap with other people's inner worlds. Each individual's consciousness seems to be in an individual parallel dimension.

Anyway, the Thomas Anderson corresponds to the verbal consciousness, the "I", which is the element of the human mind which is almost entirely predicated on delusions about the nature of itself and reality. It confuses symbols and words for reality. The main delusion it has is, because "I" am verbal and symbolic, I am unchanging and shall live forever.... hmm that sounds familiar. That's a "god".

So The Matrix movie takes that delusion and projects it onto the screen. Neo becomes a "god". Essentially, the foremost delusion of the inner world matrix is portrayed as an escape from "the matrix".

We live in a world of people trying to live that delusion. There's racial and ethnic groups doing that: Jews. The whole jew religion is based on that premise; really all the abrahamic religions are based on that inner world "I"--well at least christianity is. I don't know the details about islam and don't care.

The only "escape" from the matrix that seems possible is an escape from that "I" delusion, at least to me, seems to be an embrace of the mundane reality of life on earth, which is actually quite spectacular on its own terms.

"Iranian" Plot to "Kill" Neocon Warmonger John Bolton

 Supposedly "Iranians" were plotting to "kill" neocon warmonger John Bolton. Here's some press release from the clowns in the federal gov't: link

The details are absolutely unimportant and probably 100% made up anyway.

Some of the feds must be pushing for a war with Iran, even though the war with Iraq was an utter disaster. Why is Iran such an enemy of the US? It's just because it's in the neighborhood of jewish larp land and maybe there's some long standing crazy grudge between the feds, maybe the UK government and the Iranian government after operation Ajax decades ago.

All the national governments in the world are severe impediments to human development and certainly to peace; it's been the same story for thousands of years.

US Taxpayers Splooging More Cash on War

The US blew about $8 trillion dollars on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about $20,000 per person in the US. What was the upside of any of that to any mom and pop American? Just inflation for most people. I know some people that worked at defense contractors like Raytheon who made really good salaries for several years and retired at 55, but nobody else I know personally was a direct or eve indirect beneficiary of any of that warfare. Everyone else is just getting their dollar purchasing power destroyed and their quality of life is spiraling down the toilet.

Remember when there were supposed "muslim terrorists"? They were the number one big threat? Yeah, they all but "disappeared". Was that because they died in those bullshit wars, or because they never existed in the first place. If any other "islamic terrorist" attack happens it's equally fake.

Now Israeli jews are expanding their mass murder and mayhem from "Gaza" to southern Lebanon. Lebanon is about 50/50% muslims and Christians. I know some first generation Lebanese immigrants. They were some version of Catholics. Southern Lebanon is largely muslim, I think, and is a staging ground for 99% ineffectual missile strikes at Israel. Anyway, it's not worth studying what's "going on" over there, because it's covered in a smokescreen of bullshit from both "sides"--certainly from the jews.

There was a civil war in Lebanon back in the Reagan years. The US sent troops in for "peacekeeping" and a bunch of Marines were blown up in their barracks--that's all I really remember about it. I wonder if the federal government is jewed out enough to actually get the US military involved helping the jews murder and displace civilians directly?

That might be a bridge too far. Regardless, I'm sure the US will eventually open up the money spigot to pay for more destruction over there.

To me, it seems absolutely, positively nuts. It's some comic book level fantasy/delusion driving the whole stupid cycle of destruction over there.

I've got absolutely nothing in common with the jewish mentality. Nothing in common with the muslim mentality, and nothing in common with the christians either. All those people are certifiable kookoo bananas nutjobs. 

If the murder jews manage to "win" and kill and displace like 100 million people spread out across some shitty desert territories the size of what, maybe like half of France, what's the upside for them? It's just bizarre--they get crowned as the sand lords of bombed out shitsville? Or they re-establish some minor version of an utterly bombed out Ottoman Empire? It's some bizarre Larp/19th century anachronism from some jew intellectual dweebs driving the whole thing.

Kid Knowledge: Tunnel Myth

When I was an elementary school age kid, my neighborhood friends and I went to "Rocky Cellars" in Chardon a handful of times. I guess it was about 1 mile from my house. It is an outcropping of sandstone bedrock in Chardon with some "caves" and other interesting features. One of the stories I heard as a kid is there is a tunnel from Rocky Cellars to the courthouse on the square, which is about 3000 feet away. Even when I was 8 or 10 years old, I realized there's no way somebody built a tunnel through 3000 feet of sandstone up to the square in Chardon.

There are several of those sandstone outcroppings in Geauga County. A couple are on park owned land, and several are on private property. Unfortunately, one of the most impressive formations of sandstone in the area is on private property on the opposite side of the ski hill "Alpine Valley" off 322. The formations are off Rockhaven Road near Sherman.

Anyway, I think I know where that story of the tunnel to the courthouse came from. It's a jumbled version of a story from the early 1800s shortly after Americans in young America settled in the Ohio territory in what became Geauga County. The story is captured here: (link) 

In July of the same year (1812) Samuel King, of Long Meadow, Massachusetts, with his family and effects, drawn by four oxen and a horse, reached Chardon, after a journey of forty days.  He moved into the courthouse, built an addition, and used the seat prepared for the judges-the judicial bench - as a doorstep.  The surrender of Hull, in August, sent a shiver of fear to all dwellers in the woods, under the influence of which Mr. King packed up and returned East, as did many others, and Captain Canfield and Edward Paine made such hasty provision for the safety of their families as they could, and marched towards the enemy.
     It is said that Captain Paine, clerk of the county, securely packed up the archives, judicial and municipal, of Geauga, consisting of one small volume and several papers, and solemnly deposited them in the safe of the Rocky Cellar, a structure northeast of the village, ere he departed for the wars, and that the vandal red man failed to find them in his absence.

The thing that actually happened, then is Edward Paine hid court records in Rocky Cellar before the men of the County went off to fight in the war of 1812. That story is captured in the "Pioneer History" of Geauga County.

It's interesting that key pieces of info survive in the "tunnel to the courthouse" folk tale of Rocky Cellar, but the overall story is jumbled. So a tale from 1812 made it to 1980s kid lore. By then there was no authoritative version of the story and the vast majority of residents of Chardon don't know about the King family, or the Paine family, or the Canfield family even though their names are still on streets in the city. It also seems like the story is jumbled in a predictable pattern.

The "history" parts of the story are stripped out:

• settlement of Geauga County;
• War of 1812;
• Settler's fear of the British after the failure by General Hull in Michigan;
• Storage of court documents (probably deeds and such) in a cave in Rocky Cellar.

Those facts are replaced with archetypal stand-ins plus current-day information, like the courthouse in Chardon. That element is pretty interesting in particular, because the original story was about court documents.

The tunnels in the story are archetypal story and myth fodder. When I was a kid, the mythical tunnel network was potentially vast, running between various landmarks in town, usually the courthouse was named, but also the high school was perhaps connected. Kids made up reasons for the construction of the tunnels: maybe it was some prohibition related thing, maybe part of the literal underground railroad for slaves, maybe it was war related, etc...

What really happened was the original story was too complicated, and the historical details and names were not important so they were dropped, then the gaps in the story were filled in with archetypal or present day anachronistic details.

In digital telecommunications there is a concept of "bits per symbol". A very clean signal, high signal to noise ratio, can faithfully represent many more bits per symbol. The kid-lore can't represent all those details because kids lack the shared collective background to keep all the "bits per symbol".

Kid Knowledge

When I was growing up, I was tapped into a bunch of "underground" kid knowledge about my local area. It was "underground" because adults like my parents didn't ever learn about it. I think the knowledge passed from child to child for generations in a parallel universe. Those days in the 1970s and 1980s were wildly different than now. Almost all the kids I grew up with were free range kids. Only a couple had weirdly strict parents, but today that's the norm, which is also pretty weird. Why did people change so drastically?

Anyway, just two things I knew that my parents didn't know or every bother investigating after being told about it were:

• "Rocky Cellars" in Chardon, Ohio;
• The old Cleveland and Eastern railroad grades, which are all but gone today.

Rocky cellars is an interesting outcropping of sandstone bedrock in Chardon, Ohio on Basquin Drive. Today, you can't really see any of it from the roadside, but back in the 1970s it was pretty visible. Generations of kids went and explored that area. A house was there even when I was a kid but apparently nobody cared about little kids running around in the woods and "wild" areas, even somebody's backyard in those days. Rocky Cellars is mentioned in Charles Prosser's book on northeast Ohio geology. Although in that book it's called "Rocky Cellar".

One piece of lore attached to Rocky Cellars is there is supposedly a tunnel from there to the Chardon Courthouse basement via the sandstone bedrock of Chardon. I doubt that's true--it's about 3000 feet from point to point. It wouldn't be all that hard to excavate that much material. My old house in Chardon was in a former sandstone quarry and I dug out a sump in the sandstone with a jackhammer in my basement in maybe an hour. It's not clear why anyone would invest that much effort in a tunnel. I think it's more likely that somebody realized it's the "same" sandstone formation in both places, then that morphed into the idea that they were "connected" by a tunnel.

Anyway, I heard about all that from other kids. My parents never heard of any of it.

When I was a kid--maybe 10-12 years old in the early 1980s, I knew about the Cleveland and Eastern Railroad grades but I didn't know much about the railroad until I was older. Kids knew about the railroad grades as a transportation network that bypassed the more difficult terrain in northern Geauga County. It was possible to ride a bike on some of the grades from Munson township into Chardon. Today, the grades are just visible on LIDAR elevation imagery, but when I was a kid, the railroad bed was still quite obvious and visible plus it was marked on old topographic maps. You could ride a bike along there quite easily because the grades followed ancient river valleys that were filled in with glacial till thousands of years ago.

After decades of developers building houses and new neighborhoods, railroad beds from the early 20th century are mostly gone and inaccessible.

When I was a kid, my friends and I would ride a bike from our neighborhood in Munson township, into the center of Chardon, about 7 miles away via a hidden network of 100 year old railroads that most adults didn't ever hear about. It was no big deal. Today, the only kids I see doing anything remotely similar are Amish. I hardly ever see white children out and about.

There was a universe of kid knowledge back then, which was heavy on local lore. I think a lot of that information disappeared and was swamped out by pop culture garbage.