What I find interesting is how the Putin’s behaviour can be viewed through the prism of a mafia boss. As opposed to a strong man, a mad man, a megalomaniac.

The author Andrew Levi is an experienced Kremlinologist.

Interesting thread, comparing Putin to a mafia boss.
https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1511000355781365767?s=20&t=3nD3A_OEWFEWX36lWBJEow

Indeed, sometimes one's choices don't matter to what happens eventually. On occasion the path forks and one's in a dilemma which one to take, one then does, after pondering deeply upon the options, only to find out later that both paths reunite farther down. Such things do happen. Makes me wonder if free will means anything at all!

Yes, so on this assumption some eastern mystical traditions are poor mystical practice. This is not to say that they are not excellent meditation, or mind control technique’s etc. The notion that anyone can achieve enlightenment simply by acting in exactly the correct way (as in the infinite monkey analogy) is misleading.

Also inline with the other replies I would suggest that infinity is a peculiarity of intellectual thought and cannot be applied to real world situations. For example a pendulum would decelerate & accelerate at infinite rates at the end of each swing. It might be possible to Map this mathematically, but in the real world it is clearly not what happens. Likewise I have yet to come across an example of infinity occurring, or applying to real world situations.

Well this infinite monkey analogy seems to have a malignancy about it.

But joking aside, what I was saying is that a being achieving a mystical goal, or enlightenment or whatever. Is as a result of the stage of growth they are at as a being*. So for example a mystic, or aspirant might practice really hard in a certain way and achieve enlightenment. But that that achievement was going to happen anyway, irrespective of the course of action of the mystic. That that course of action might be one of a set of behaviours exhibited by a being going through such an inevitable development in the growth of their being.

*I am working from the assumption that a being is in essence transcendent of the world, or some kind of immortal soul.

Or maybe they became more firm in the truth.

What truth are you referring to?

(I note no one else picked up this hot potato. Maybe it’s a good way into a discussion of mysticism)

Not merit, but growth.

I don’t know what JWST stands for?

I agree with Metaphysician Undercover here. Infinite time is a peculiarity of philosophy, along with the infinite monkey theorem.

Also I disagree with your point about random mystics achieving the goal eventually. As I see it and as it is taught in mystical traditions there is a path, or lifestyle. So if one puts one foot in front of the other on that path, one has achieved one’s goal. Or another way of viewing this is how an acorn becomes a mature tree. It is achieved one growth ring at a time, not all of a sudden by happenstance.

Perhaps by goal you are thinking about the realisation of nirvana. If such a state does indeed exist, then eventually every being would get there in varying ways.

Yes, the path from the person to the (true)self, put simply. I could elaborate, but it might not get us any further than that.

There is the issue of what the true self, or the Divine is and there is the issue of how the person gets there, if at all.

Agreed, but unfortunately you won’t find many folk on here who practice. In the absence of this practice it’s just words chasing their own tail.

Lots of detail around Omicron here.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/omicron-variant-post-1-were-fed-its

Yes I totally agree. It’s interesting that they don’t mention the so called problems caused by globalisation. Or in U.K. 42 years of Tory incompetence. But blame false enemies, which the educated can see don’t exist.

I do think though that there we’re issues with high rates of immigration between 2004 and 2016 and this made it easy for UKIP to employ xenophobia. However there were solutions to this issue without leaving the EU, but it would require competent government to achieve it. Tory incompetence wasn’t up to the job.

Yep.

Nice article, explaining simply the inevitable result of our Tory Brexit.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/brexit-means-brexit-theresa-mays-slogan-was-truer-than-she-knew

I haven’t had time yet to watch the video. But I can answer the question it poses. Johnson can’t afford a trade war. He is becoming weaker and weaker and may become a helpless witness to an economic collapse of his own making.

I see this policy as a naive, incoherent day dream of a populist. It has some nice sounding phrases in it and it might be something which an enlightened society could achieve. But it is so out of touch with the reality in the U.K, that it smacks of insanity. Indeed the Tory government we have had for the last eleven years has moved us in the opposite direction, to a low wage, deregulated, over leveraged, imbalanced economy. With hollowed out and struggling public services and support mechanisms.

With the twin crises of COVID and Brexit, we are staring at an economic rollercoaster ahead of us. With a deluded, incompetent government in denial of the depth of the issues coming home to roost day by day.

Like a slow motion car crash, it’s difficult to avert one’s gaze.

Sorry, I’ve been busy on Twitter.
I’m fine, I’m insulated from Brexit fallout. I came to the forum today as this week is going to be important for the future relations between U.K. and E.U.

Lord Frost is getting ready to put an ultimatum to the EU tomorrow. There’s been lots of talk of a trade war with the EU over the past few days. Tory’s are ebullient in their brinkmanship, however they may be arrogant in thinking that the EU won’t turn the screws. There is talk in Brussels that it is time to hang U.K. out to dry for a while in the hope that it will bring them to their senses.

U.K. government is actually in chaos, scared of their electorate and being thrown from crisis to crisis. The E.U. Has been concerned for the U.K. economy and people, rather than seeking to punish U.K. in some way.

Major high energy use industry is on the verge of collapse due to the gas price having risen 10 fold, the government is still in denial about the depth of the energy crisis. To start a trade war at this point would throw the country into turmoil.

Watch this space, Chris Grey is worth a follow for a sober analysis.
https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/1447260026767396870

His blog from a few days ago.
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/

Nicely put. I came across a phrase the other day, which conveys a lot about discovery and being in a few words.
“ you can’t become what you can’t see”

I think that the first step in dispelling the materialist delusion is to understand that there is a causal relationship between abstract ideas and physical things. The second step, is to understand that unlike simple processing, where 'processed' is the effect, in the case of abstract ideas, the ideas are the cause and artificial goods are the effect.

I wouldn’t describe it as “the materialist delusion”. But rather an ideology which doesn’t (from its own perspective) require a sentient being as the knower of abstract ideas. Take that knower out of the system and nothing has been lost.

I don’t think we as people who attribute a more fundamental role to the knower in this can dismiss this view. We are simply on the other side of the intellectual division between idealism and materialism. The other side of the same coin.

It is in a sub forum of politics and current affairs. It is a philosophical discussion of a current affairs issue.

Yes, although this happened many thousands of years ago. It is only recently that we have run out of new lands to colonise. And only recently that we have polluted the planet. We have to find a way to live sustainably quickly, or the ecosystem will do it for us. The later being rapid population collapse as has been happening to over dominant species for hundreds of millions of years. It’s all there in the fossil record.

Now that the effects of climate change are writ large we may have rapid political change in favour of Green party’s. Industry will adapt quickly as they prioritise providing what the market demands. The worry is groups or nations who turn against this imperative and exploit warfare to resist. Or become failed states in which there is no effective power structure, or capital to instigate the required change.

I am quite confident that China, EU, US and other Western developed countries will successfully adapt. South America is a worry along with India, the Middle East and other populous Asian countries. Smaller failed states are not so significant because as they fail their carbon foot print will fall. Although if they have forests, these will be cut down for fuel.Which is the problem with South America, the Amazon basin is already seeing climate collapse, which could turn the forest into desert.

It’s difficult to provide proofs for things like global tipping points. The signs are there and arguably the tipping point is reached somewhere we are not aware of at a time we are not aware of.

There is no doubt that the permafrost is melting all around the northern hemisphere as is documented in this article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00659-y

This was published before the record heatwaves in those areas just a few weeks ago. I don’t have figures for how much methane will be released. It won’t require much though to nullify all our efforts to reach carbon zero, as methane is at least 25 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

This combined with our lethargy in reaching carbon zero and the continued cutting down of forest(which is still increasing). Is a clear enough sign for me.

Yes, but it’s an echo chamber and only really worth it for those who are interested in breaking news and current affairs.
I quite like it for cartoons and satire.

Yes, we only need look at the tobacco, or oil lobbies.
Here in the U.K. we have a distinct privileged class. An overthrow of our class system. These people are dead against any kind of levelling up, or Universal basic income. It suits them fine for the status quo to continue, by propping up a Tory government. This is entrenched, because they only have to think about the alternative and they are horrified, this prejudice is more than financial, or economic. It’s social and cultural too. Personally I trace it right back to the Norman conquest and our country being ruled over for centuries by French overlords. Johnson has stepped into that role, groomed by Eton college and Oxford.

Agreed, I expect a string of crises will help us adapt. But without them, I expect little change. Perhaps the EU will lead the way.

Interesting ideas, but I have given this some thought and came up with a problem. The rich, some successful business people, elites and privileged people will resist the degree of sharing and cooperation required for any of these solutions to solve the problem.

Rather what I see is the super rich hoarding as much wealth as they can, by unscrupulous means sometimes. Also powerful people might prefer to live in a dystopian world, than a progressive sustainable world.Because of this fear of sharing that will be required and to continue exploitation and profiteering.

Has any thought been given how to tackle this issue? What do people think here?

I think we will find ways of managing economies based more on sustainable models through having to deal with a succession of crises. The free market capitalism model was useful for a period of technological growth during the 20th century. But is now proving to destructive, a beast with an ever growing appetite.
We are dealing with such a crisis now, something more sustainable might come out of it. For example, a way of printing money which doesn’t result in the usual negative effects. Don’t ask me how this might work, but I think such solutions are possible.

That the effects could be extremely bad -- that hitting a tipping in arctic ocean ice, which may trigger tipping points with permafrost, forest ecocystems, land-based ice, and the system can accelerate and dominate human emissions (i.e. further human emissions become irrelevant) etc. -- is the reason to not run this experiment in the first place.

These tipping points are already breached. We’ve recently had 30+ centigrade heatwaves in all permafrost regions. They are melting rapidly, there is enough methane there to accelerate climate change beyond what we can mitigate. Even if we had zero carbon production now this methane would more than compensate for the reduction. It’s acceleration and a rollercoaster ride from now on, whatever we do.

It’s no accident that the super rich are using deregulated capitalism to extract as much wealth out of vulnerable countries as they can before economies start to collapse. They will be looking for hiding holes in remote places, like New Zealand right now for their bunkers.

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. So then where do the variations come in is what I don't understand. Is it just a matter of slightly delaying the increase of temperature then, to buy more time until you get to the next stable state?

There is an angle I have been thinking about here. We are not going from one stable state to another in the short term. We may reach a stable state again in the future, but the instability in the meantime will be unpredictable, have numerous unforeseen effects and last what to us is a long time perhaps 10,000yrs, perhaps a couple of million years, we just don’t know.

The stable state we evolved in might have taken a long time to settle out, also, we don’t know what unsettled states are like. Already we are seeing torrential rainfall events, as in Germany last week, or unprecedented heatwaves near the artic circle as has been experienced all around the arctic circle during the last month. Irregular desertification, the irregular distribution of tornado alleys and high humidity, high temperature regions in the tropics in which humans cannot survive without air conditioning.

We don’t know if the rapid changes going on will affect seismic, or volcanic activity. Or have unforeseen effects in the oceans. Tsunami’s could become commonplace in some areas, along with earthquakes.

In short we are in for a rollercoaster ride for some time to come.

We are 8 billion people. Thus, we need to apply the technologies necessary to sustain such numbers. Simple logic!

I don’t want to be part of a pile on, only to point out the flaw in this argument( although James Riley has already laid out the reality).

What do those 8 billion people do when the sea level has risen by 30 metres, do they all move uphill a little?
And what about the people already inhabiting the higher land, do they have a say. I would hazard a guess that at least 2-3billion live below 30m altitude, many of the worlds largest cities are below this level and a lot of fertile farmland would be lost.

Not to mention societal collapse and despotic rule, which hasn’t been mentioned yet. Our world would soon become dystopian, making the degrees of cooperation required for your scenario to work, impossible.

I’ll leave it there, for now.

Point is, "recharge" rate of the sun is way higher than geothermal and there's no surface area to volume problem.

I was going to step in and make this point, you beat my to it.
We could easily produce sufficient energy from solar power and solar generation plants are being built, but probably not fast enough. Although it’s probably to late anyway, as the tipping points are already being triggered. Even if we do manage to reduce emissions significantly, the damage is already sufficient for civilisation collapse, as we have discussed before.

Chris Grey’s Brexit blog.
https://t.co/wS92ePJqYu?amp=1

“ As the BBC’s Home editor Mark Easton put it, it is “the paradox of Brexit that taking control of your borders requires more international co-operation, not less”. That doesn’t just apply to control of borders, of course. It exposes the entire fantasy of a sovereignty that can be exercised without regard for that of others, and the lie inherent in the ‘take back control’ slogan. It really is time that David Frost and Boris Johnson understood this, but there’s absolutely no sign that they will.”

I agree about the third way. Although it may have been The Sun giving Blair their endorsement which really swung it.

Going back to the demographic shift, post 2008 the world and the economy in the U.K. has changed. The foundational pillars supporting the Tory’s have faltered. They have shown now that they cannot sustainably manage the public services, the Home Office, social care etc etc. Now they have thrown business and prosperity under the Brexit bus, just to neuter UKIP. They really are a busted flush.

Talk to a young person, someone who has recently qualified to vote, what reasons there are to vote Tory?

We used to say that the young are ideologically to the left until they feel a bit of wealth, success, own their own home. That they turn Tory to maintain that level of comfort. How many of our young (now) are going to reach that degree of comfort?

Enough to deliver a Tory government? On the assumption that they are a safe pair of hands?

I agree about the fear of the left with Corbyn, that it pushed people to vote Tory. But I differ in that I see this as primarily due to a smearing of Corbyn in the press. I don’t think there are the numbers to deliver Tory governments on the fear of socialism alone. Also there is a demographic shift to the left going on. As the voters who remember the winter of discontent are beginning to die off. To be replaced by young voters who have a different outlook on the world and what the priorities of the country are.

The Brexit problems are beginning to bite and due to Johnson’s decision not to delay Brexit until after the pandemic, which was offered by the EU, has guaranteed a winter of discontent at the end of this year. His reckless boosterism is bound to become unstuck at some point. And the numbers of people who will never forgive him and his party is growing.

Perhaps you haven’t been following the negative effects of Brexit closely. They are mounting daily, for example and there are hundreds of stories like this affecting most sectors.
https://twitter.com/CoppetainPU/status/1410727085903990784?s=20
The big farming issue around me is sugar beet. Seems they will soon be in crisis.
Or that Sunak announced yesterday that they have given up on seeking equivalence on financial services within the EU.

I would counter your assessment of left bad and right good on economic policy. It is right wing policy which has brought us to this point after all and which was responsible for 2008.

I do to have time to go into greater depth today, so can return to this later.

Pragmatism, I agree about the excesses of Corbyn mania, but the current leadership is moderate on EU membership.
A pragmatic approach to deal with the adverse effects of Brexit, which are beginning to emerge and will become much worse. I am suggesting an economic crisis for which the solution will only lie in greater economic alignment with the EU.
I can see Tory’s refusing to aligning, because power is their only modus operandi. Labour is more concerned with the health of the nation and we are about to step back into our shoes as the sick man of Europe.

As regards Corbyn’s manifesto, when voters are asked about policies in isolation they are broadly supportive of such policies. It was the perception of Corbyn as fed by the Murdoch press and Tory rags to voters. Not to mention the anti socialism we are endemically groomed and conditioned with from cradle to grave, which fed that perception. Culminating in the myth that Corbyn could not be trusted with the nuclear codes and that he would welcome in the worlds despots.

I am working on the assumption of a Labour, or coalition Labour government for two, perhaps three terms. Which would result in a genuinely EU friendly policy. When I say rejoin single market, I’m thinking of the Norway model.

We have been highjacked by the rise of populism, so you/we can’t blame the voting public. They are innocent and very few understand what is really going on here. The blame lies fairly and squarely with the Tory’s who jumped on the populist bandwagon and sold their country down the river so Blojo could be king for a day and usher in another generation of Tory rule.

But, as is dawning on some of them, they have gone to far, lost trust with reality and destroyed the trust upon which the government and constitution is built. That this embarrassment of a government populated by Eton twits is a disgrace and has probably finished their party off for a generation.

Yes, I agree. Fortunately I have a get out clause, I will qualify for Scottish citizenship.
The U.K. EU relations will settle down and I expect we will rejoin the single market after a decade, or possibly sooner. For me this episode is more about a struggle for survival in the Conservative party, following the catastrophic failure of the financial crash in 2008. We are still reeling from the fallout and the financial bubble has not yet burst.

I appreciate your thoughts on the issue and that you would rather not talk about it.
I would agree with you in regard of a number of Conservatives, although I had the impression that Cameron was a moderate. Although I would in hindsight consider that his and Osbourne’s pro EU mutterings might have been lies.
My experience of anti EU politics was from the eighties and early nineties through family connections. I didn’t fall for it and saw it as a prejudice alongside a naive interpretation of the EU. I also concluded that once infected with this anti EU sentiment, Tory’s would hardly ever reject it, only believe it all the more, on very little evidence, in a preference for spurious rumour.

I would echo the points made by Apollodorus, that it was the fear of the Tory party being torn apart by UKIP which drove the talk of a referendum. Also that the promise of one swung the 2015 election in Cameron’s favour.
It has been acknowledged by commentators at the time that Cameron, had expected to remain in coalition with the Lib Dem’s in 2015 and that the Lib Dem’s would block any referendum. And that Cameron was surprised at the size of the Brexit bounce in his favour.

I can’t comment much on France as I don’t receive much news from there. I would expect that there was also some industrial decline in the face of globalisation. The main difference I think is that France didn’t deregulate, shrink the state and reduce taxation, like in the U.K.
So France still has its nationalised services and social support in place. By contrast, here in the U.K. these have been starved of resources until they are in crisis, or have been shrunk to the point of crisis. On the alter of free market capitalism, or something.

The last time I was in France, I experienced this first hand, in a small way, but I was shocked by it. I was walking for the day and caught a train back to the start of the walk, in a small provincial town. As I walked into the station building, I was expecting to come across a ticket machine, but was surprised to find a person in the ticket office. I had been conditioned to think that such staffing had been cut due to cost cutting measures as in U.K. In the U.K. you would be lucky to find a ticket office open in a large town.