Overinvesting

I was drinking a Caesar one evening. This being a drink more common to Canada, I'll explain in case you haven't tried one. It's vodka with tomato juice, W... sauce, Tabasco sauce and spices. The rim is sometimes wet with lime then dipped in salt or spice, but mine wasn't like that. I had found some Clamato and mixed that with seasoned salt, pepper, W sauce (I can't spell Worchesterfieldshustershire) and, of course, vodka. I lamented the fact that I didn't have Tabasco, but it was not bad without it. I had the W sauce, but no T sauce. That'll tell you how much heat I like on my food.

At any rate, there is one extra ingredient almost always found in a proper Caesar: a celery stick. I like the celery so my Caesar had two. As the Caesar level in my glass lowered, the celery sticks got shorter. About 3/4 of the way through, I picked up one of the celery sticks and the other stuck to it momentarily as I raised them both out of the glass. The second celery stick came unstuck and splashed back into the liquid, which was perilously close to my face at the time. As my luck would have it, a splash of Caesar went under my glasses and directly into my left eye. Tomato juice! Pepper! Salt! Right in the eye! Man did it smart for a while!

This should really not be something worth sharing, and it wouldn't have been if not for the diabolically implanted thought that rambled across my busy brain even while it was working hard to send explosions of pain to my left eye: "I'm sure glad I didn't have Tobasco in this Ceasar!" I was disgusted with myself!

If you are concerned by the title, this is not going to be a post about Wall Street or stocks. All I know about either is that I don't want to know about either. The type of investment I'll be talking about is a kind that we've all made. You might be thinking that you've never made any investments in your life, but you have. A majority of us make them every day. But they're abstract, so the return on investment, ROI, is not measured in money, and is therefore more difficult to assess.

I'm talking about investments we make in ideas, opinions, beliefs, or increasingly often just the people from whom we hear these ideas, opinions and beliefs. Due entirely to social media, it is possible for the average person to observe total strangers aggressively airing their investment portfolios on a daily basis, and to give them some positive or negative ROI. It's fun and it's free!

Well, that's what I used to think too. But I've started to realize that this kind of investment is nothing so new as social media. It's been going on for a very long time. What we used to call "propaganda," we now call "social media." I'm not Winston Smith, folks. I haven't worked for "The Party," or the "Thought Police," but I have heard some Winston Smiths who have risked room 101 to enlighten us all. They tell us what's being done to us, and it makes us angry. We SHOULD be angry! We NEED to be angry! But, to mix literary allusions, we are happy taking our Soma.

The Soma is often in the form of, "That's just conspiracy theory!" Or, "That's fake news." Or, "Take off your tinfoil hat and come down off your soapbox, you whackjob!" As the bad news increases and becomes MORE bad, the world has gotten itself very concerned with deflecting that bad news, whether it's true or not. I'm sure I don't need to post any of the dozens, nay hundreds of examples of memes people post about getting negativity out of their universes or seeing only the positivity they force themselves to see. I've railed from post to post right here about the "well-at-least" mentality I see weakening, not to say domesticating, our species. The beginning of this post was an example. But for a very good illustration of the Svengali-ish, Somafying, de-escalization of our human nature I intend to vilify in this post, here is roving reporter, Walter Sobchak:

"Nothing is fucked here, Dude." Do you ever feel like the Dude? Do you ever feel like there's some Walter trying to talk you down in the face of great negativity by saying, "You're being very un-Dude here!"? I constantly feel this way and rather than mellow out, I go the other way and allow it to piss me off lest I lose the natural instinct of anger the world is trying to suppress. So when the Dude tries his hand at telling someone the same pacifying drivel that worked on him, it's not so successful. That kind of crap is usually not successful on me either. In that way, I'm more like the Big Lebowski in this next clip:

 

 

"Nothing is fucked? The goddamned plane has crashed into the mountain!" I mean, say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos.

 

 

One Lebowski quote too far, no? I got carried away. However, as you will see, it all converges like a KKK Grand Poobah, to a point. And if you'll indulge me one more, I myself dabbled in pacifism once. I have great respect for Ghandi and Jesus, but I fear the problems of our world just don't have time for their approach, if we have time for any. And our greatest enemy is notoriously unreceptive to this approach. As they have always been.

 

"Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor." Frederick Douglass

This is a quote from the speech, "What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?" Oppression makes wise men mad. In both meanings of the word. Angry, and crazy with anger. If they are not wise, they become RESTIVE under this treatment.

Folks, he was talking about slavery and there were slaves who just got used to being slaves. Surely THEY were some of the "well-at-least" est people of all time! "I have an owner who takes all the money for the work I do, I'm not free, can't marry who I want, my kids are taken away from me, I'm regularly raped and beaten, I'm not even considered human, but at least I can sing!" Uncle Toms made wise, rebellious slaves so angry, they made up a name for them. The slave owners spun a different tale telling their slaves that they had it great! And the slaves submitted to it like a drug. Like Soma. Nothing is fucked here slaves. You're being veeery un-Dude!

But the wise knew that something was fucked! They knew the goddamned plane had crashed into the mountain! And they got MAD, as Frederick Douglass says. And they united with like-minded non-slaves and revolted. Violently! And it worked... sort of. At least it worked better than pacifist actions would have. Did I just go all "well-at-least" on your asses? Dammit! Well, there was revolution. There was independence and a civil war. And things changed a great deal, specifically for the slaves. It was attained through violence as was the independence of the very nation only 76 years before Douglass's speech. In the highly quotable words of Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Unfortunately, there was a limit to the change. The traditional limitation that Douglass calls the unvarying characteristic of tyrants that goes all the way back to the Pharoah oppressing the Jews of Egypt 34 or 3500 years ago. Money, possession, ownership of property and the greed and corruption that comes along with the power it yields. It is no easy match for VIOLENT opposition, let alone passive resistance.

Let me give you one more fascinating example that ties in very nicely to what I'm talking about:

It's well worth it! It's 17 minutes you can afford. Trust me.

"He had crushed the German labour movement and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism." Orwell, a socialist, might well have argued, "Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos!"

You can easily guess how the author of "1984" could have actually gotten inspiration from Hitler for his book that was released only 9 years later. Hitler was in many ways Big Brother. But the main point of his write-up is the fascinating point. We are violent by nature. In a lot of ways, denying that nature and suppressing violence denotes virtuous behavior. As in the example of slavery above, as well as the suppression of Hitler in WWII, using that violence to overcome evil can also be a virtue.

Chuck Palahniak has written about this phenomenon at length and far more entertainingly. You may have read his book or seen the movie "Fight Club." I agree with Orwell. I see this as a very real part of MY nature. I also agree with most of what the narrator in the video above says although I'm not sure about his characterization of Orwell as the greatest prophet atheism has ever produced. The books behind him reveal that he just might have slightly Christian-supporting opinions. I also think he strays into the conservative, churchy side of what to do with this fascinating tidbit. I don't think we should concentrate on the small struggles that we are engaging in both worldwide and in the US. I think there is a Marvel worthy villain that we need to focus our innate violence on and conquer. Who or what is that villain? It's in the review! It's in Frederick Douglass too! But we constantly and Pavlovically ignore it as the narrator does in this video. The property-owning classes were willing to forgive him for anything. Hitler was financed by heavy industrialists who saw him as the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. Here again is that unvarying characteristic of tyrants. If you want to give that Marvel villain a name, it's Mammon or Richie Rich or Filthy Lucre. Big money is the goddamned plane that has crashed us into the mountain!

Exploitation of the earth and wildlife by greedy corporations is undoubtedly what has caused Covid 19 and many viruses before it, yet we concentrate on vaccines and argue about the virtues of mask wearing. Protection of the "opulent minority" against the majority was the original purpose of American government penned by James Madison back in 1787, and for almost 250 years, it's remained unimpeachable in its performance of precisely that. Do you think other governments differ? The majority of Canadian and American tax is collected upon fraudulent promises that our income taxes would be temporary, but we still bicker about carbon caps and inheritance tax while WE can be charged with tax fraud for not paying this fraudulently levied taxation... and not once since shortly after its perpetration has it been a part of any complicit politician's platform to even review it. The income gap increases, the rich get richer and poor get poorer, yet we call that (as the narrator did) a "booming economy." The prices of everything have risen dramatically while our wages have stagnated or dropped. Yet we mistrust the victims of this plight and revere its manufacturers. Our "leaders" endlessly lie and let us down, yet we vote as dogs salivate whether we're given sustenance or not. The US and Canada (and a lot of other nations) endeavor to perpetuate the oligarchy of the World Bank, Big Business and their political buffers, yet the peons bear our dispossession gracefully and peacefully.

Any of these points alone is enough to make a wise man mad. Taken together, it is inexplicable to me why there are still so very few whispers of revolt worldwide! America and Canada have recently celebrated their country's independence days, rich and poor alike. As peons, though not yet slaves, we can still relate to Frederick Douglass when he wrote, "To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

Is it just that we have really REALLY good Soma? Well, it's time to consider the title. How often on social media do you see someone soundly defeated in an argument not surrender? It's such a common occurrence that it's been given a poker nickname. An apt nickname because it's something that happens frequently in gambling and... you guessed it, investing. Doubling down. I'll go to the teeming well once again. When Trump is doing something stupid, that he KNOWS the majority hates, does he stop and apologize? No. He has OVERINVESTED in his narrative/behavior. So he doubles down. In fact this link actually says he TRIPLES down on his unpopular divisive language.

My assertion is that the majority of the world have accepted our base positions in life and our meagre portions of the proverbial national pies and have expertly transformed our mentalities to accommodate them. We are the domesticated livestock we've been indoctrinated to be. And if we're really not, we've spent far too much time and effort justifying and rationalizing to self-deprogram. I think this is why revolutions are dependent upon the young. However, the young seldom have the wisdom to make them mad, in the Frederick Douglass sense. I think this is why our education is diminishing instead of developing.

As for myself, I hope I never stop pulling for the underdog majority in our epic struggle against our IMF masters. (International Mankind is Fucked) Nooooothing is fucked here Dude. Nothing is fucked.

But I feel myself drawn to the peace and restive state of surrender more every year I live to see all the rage of the world misdirected instead of concentrated on the few who have more than earned it. I wonder if my resistance to change is nothing more than my own personal overinvestment in revolt. Maybe someday, like Bernard Marx of Brave New World, I'll give in and put myself in a zoo where I self-flagellate and starve for the entertainment of the rich. I'm part way there already.

Or maybe I'll triple down and go all Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal) and instead of eating poor children, I'll start eating the rich. Low carb, low in sugar, and Atkins approved! Ahhh I'll flip a coin.