Everything will turn out to be nothing. That small crowd who have taken everything will finally get what they want: everything. But at the moment people realize what's happened, the system will explode. It has in the past, and it's about to again. Just like Prigogene postulated. Boom!

Having spent my life observing people, what I think is likely to occur will be less than pleasant. First we will kill one another over limited resources. The weak will die by the thousands. Ten of thousands. Those totally unprepared will perish by the millions. Then the–at-first individual but later organized large-group–killing is likely to whittle survivors down by millions more. And that powerful elite who brings it all about will be sitting in their hidden,well-stocked, fortified, easily defended, luxurious aeries will find themselves the owners of nothing. Ashes. Bands of savages roaming what's left.

Their gene pool will be severely limited and it won't take many generations before the world one again experiences the madness of the Roman emperors. Even if there is an "economic" aspect for being a food provider for the elite, those people will still be slaves. All of the survivors are likely to be slaves or rebels.

If members of that elite don't find a way to redistribute resources quickly we are likely to lose it all. The world is already engaged in genocide, the collaspe of the most influential civilization will be the tipping point for the rest of the world as well.

When I look around me as dispassionate as I am amble, my observations scare me. I think we are already in the process of collapse and I haven't an idea of how to influence any of it.

Wow. Didn't expect here tonight. I read this headline:

Bernie Sanders Pens Powerful Indictment of 'Oligarchic Control' of Our Politics and Economy

That set my head off to the above. Now I'm going to go back and see what Bernie has to say.

Not what I thought it was going to be but the stuff I read just reenforces my belief 

Check this out. Guess our society has its priorities all messed up.

Been semi-depressed as of late about the reality outside these walls. The problems all around us as a species are staggering. Look around. It's all in turmoil. Not just here (where we are supposed to be the epitome of civilization), but all over the world. 

I've spent hours wondering about the state of things only to be overcome by the enormity of situation. I just didn't see any way to get the mental competency needed to chip away at the problems in any meaningful way.

But I just realized that perhaps two aspects of my life can serve to assist me; perhaps they are already.

I am beginning to master time and space. 

Time I have experienced for a significant number of years. I have experimented with it for many years. I have reached a point in my experience where I can control its flow around me. (I hate the fact that I didn't realize I had this ability a couple of years ago. I could have used it then and K would still be here. I could have held her in near stasis while the medical world outside our bubble skyrockets in understanding to where we hit the time they found an antidote to her illness.)

My mastery of space is harder to explain because space itself is such a multifaceted part of reality. Different levels. Each of which is mind blowing. 

Most recently, I've been thinking about systems. They are like insects in their diversity and number. They are everywhere. Everywhere! So many systems. And all of those disparate system combine into larger and larger systems. A bazillion bubbles of systems. Foam on the wave of space sweeping us along.

Of particular interest are systems out of equilibrium as discussed by Ilya Prigogene in his book. In addition to the physical chemical systems he studied, I think his ideas could apply to social systems as well. To see examples of social systems out of equilibrium, check out any newspaper, the web, TV. So many systems jostling one another. 

The bifurcation is coming.

Once again, conflicted.

A North Carolina man faces ethnic intimidation charges after leaving bacon at a mosque and making death threats to its members as they prepared for worship in observance of Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, authorities said on Friday.

Russell Thomas Langford of Fayetteville was arrested late on Thursday, the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office said. He is a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, WTVD-TV in Raleigh said, quoting officials at Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.

On Thursday afternoon, members of the Masjid Al Madina in Raeford found two packages of bacon at the mosque entrance, the sheriff’s office said.

Observant Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork products. Ramadan is Islam’s holy month, during which believers abstain from eating and drinking during daylight hours.

Langford is charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to the terror of the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Officials with the sheriff’s office and Fort Bragg military base could not be reached for comment on Friday.

“We have called for stepped-up police presence not only for that mosque but others in that state,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group.

“Every mosque all over the country has nightly Ramadan activities, so they’re vulnerable,” he said.

A Chevy Tahoe was in the parking lot when the bacon was found, and the driver of the Tahoe, later identified as Langford, followed one of the members home, the sheriff’s statement said.

The suspect returned in the evening, showed a gun to one of the members, a retired Army captain and Muslim chaplain at Fort Bragg, and threatened to kill him, according to a report by WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.

The chaplain invited him inside to talk, but the man left, the report said. Later, the man returned in his SUV and tried to run over a group of people who were going inside the mosque for evening Ramadan prayers, the report said.

Investigators found firearms, ammunition and other weapons inside Langford’s vehicle, according to the sheriff’s statement.

(Reporting by Karen Brooks in Fort Worth, Texas; Editing by Howard Goller)

My first (Liberal/Progressive) reaction is to declare: Another racist on the loose. (Who looks the most humane in this tableaux? The retired Army captain who is a Muslim chaplain at Fort Bragg.)

A second reaction is realizing that maybe this Army Reserve major saw things in a different light. Maybe he's spent time in a land where he found it impossible to distinguish between friend and foe and where foe often hid amidst friend. 

That's just curiosity however as I have no real info on this guy. He is a major which means he's been in the service of his country for a number of years. At his rank, he's also been exposed to a number of relatively high-level positions. 

Like the Stanford rapist case, this is another example of having to ask ourselves "what role should a person's history play in judging his/her current actions?" What is a mitigating circumstance? Is the severity of the crime a determining factor in what significance previous history should play?

I wanted to think more about volunteering to become a sentient space ship but recent events have brought me back to social realities. The latest events concern a Stanford student caught in the act of raping an unconscious women, going to trial, and being sentenced to six months by a judge who is an alum of the same school. The following is a steal from USA Today:

The Stanford University swimming star convicted of raping an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party told his sentencing judge he was "shattered by the party culture" during his four-month stint as a student at the iconic school.

The Guardian obtained and published a section of Brock Turner’s full statement to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky. Turner sought probation but last week received a six-month jail term that has been criticized as too lenient.

Turner, now 20, acknowledges he is the "sole proprietor of what happened" on the infamous January 2015 night. Most of the excerpt discusses the impact on him rather than his 23-year-old victim. He says his dreams are haunted by the physical and emotional damage he did to her.

"During the day, I shake uncontrollably from the amount I torment myself by thinking about what has happened," he says. "I can barely hold a conversation with someone without having my mind drift into thinking these thoughts. They torture me. I go to sleep every night having been crippled by these thoughts to the point of exhaustion."

Turner blames his "poor decisions" on binge drinking and "sexual promiscuity," which he in turn blames on peer pressure.

This piece-of-shit human is broken. (And, in my usual rush to judgment, I glance at his father.)

"A recall effort against a California judge was announced on Monday in a sexual assault case at Stanford University that ignited public outrage after the defendant was sentenced to a mere six months in jail and his father complained that his son’s life had been ruined for “20 minutes of action” fueled by alcohol and promiscuity."

"Twenty minutes of action"???? Any guesses as to how this guy feels about women? Looks to me like this kid has been dragged along an all together too familiar path for his entire life.

But that doesn't excuse his sociopathic actions. For that he has to be put away until he understands the enormity of his crime. 

Same with that "affluenza" kid down in Texas who killed a bunch of people in a car incident and who then got off of serious consequences because "he was too rich to understand" his bad actions.

What are we raising here folks? There seems to be a special class of people in this country who feel somehow above societal norms. Getting easier to see why a lot of people hate white people.

Blueberries.

I try to buy American whenever possible. I'm not fanatical about it as I recognize our economic engine it so unchangeably tied to the economic network blanketing the earth. Sometimes even good intentions come to naught. Bought a camera bag and an electronic sensor from Amazon. Camera bag was mailed from France; the sensor from China.

Anyway, got a large container of large blueberries.

They were huge and fresh. Product of USA.

And they don't taste like anything. Nothing. It's like eating tiny grapes without grape flavor. They are texture only. Bummer.

A white mother and her two sons attacked a 15-year-old black boy while yelling racial slurs at an Illinois campground, police said. Carrie Weller, 42, and her sons Shane, 19, and Corry, 21, are being charged with hate crimes for punching, kicking and throwing the boy into Canton Lake on Sunday, according to court documents. Weller egged on her kids during the beating, records showed.

I can just hear them: "We hates those black folks. They steal our jobs, our women and all them government benefits while we white folks who love America are struggling to pay our bills." (Yeah, like their meth bill.)

My first response is to be astounded by these clowns who somehow feel high enough on the social pecking order to feel justified bringing injury to another for looking different. But in my moment of condemnation, I thought I could see the precursive forces whose interactions with these particular people led to this event.

My flippant distain at an imagined meth bill contains within it my fear that some day I too could surrender to the allure of changing a reality I hated for one in which I am someone special. Drugs offer alternate realities when people cannot cope with the realities they perceive before usage. No education, no jobs, no future, no hope. 

The reality in which I perceive myself to be has failed these people. (Not without their own complicity and poor choices in life.)