Can You Insulate Yourself From the Madness?

Usually there is a way forward for those who are paying attention.

Usually, things struggle on somehow for those who aren’t paying attention.

There are also times when that is not the case. After all, who was ready for the first industrial revolution? Not many, and it was a time of disaster for most people, especially those who faced it first.

Who was ready for the first world war? I cant imagine what it felt like for those who suffered either by being caught up in the fighting, or those who had their lives completely wrecked by the unprecedented involvement of the civilian public, and the tumult of the way civilisations changed almost overnight.

I dont think people are ready for where we are going over the course of the next couple of years. For most of the world, things are improving at a phenomenal rate. The developing world is apparently 85% better off today than they were at the beginning of this century. And things look to be continuing that way for the foreseeable future.

The trouble is, things do not look so rosy for the so-called developed world.

If we are to see things progressing in the same direction as we move into the second half of this decade then the so-called West is in for a catastrophic future.

Things have to change, and change drastically if Europe and North America are to survive in anything like the style to which we have become accustomed.

I had a great time in the USA back in the late sixties when I toured around the country with a bunch of crazy people living an amazing lifestyle. Part of that life I chronicled in a short book called With Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock (the book is available on Amazon). Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086QYFBPY

My son wanted me to write more about those times. Why? Because we all seemed to be having so much fun. Things aren’t like that any more. But in the background there was also the Wild West which lurked around every corner, which I couldn’t handle, and I have studiously avoided going back. Looking at North America from a distance it seems to me that part of the world is intent on destroying itself.

The trouble is, looking across Europe I see half a continent also trying to destroy itself. These are not the places one should be living in and looking to build a future.

If I was younger, I would have moved east long ago, but I wonder whether I can survive in Europe and insulate myself against the current madness.

What do I need to do to set up that insulation?

First let’s try and highlight some of the problems.

That, of course, would take a rather fat book, but there are several very simple and obvious things that are wrong.

To lead a rich and pleasurable life one needs simple things such as food, shelter, friendly neighbours, minimal interference from government, reasonable health, and fine weather.

What we currently have across Western Europe is the exact opposite in spades.

We largely depend upon imported food. Europe is vastly overpopulated, and is dependent upon imports for a dangerously large percentage of its population. The UK alone is dependent on imports for roughly 80% of its agricultural needs. That puts the risk of starvation rather high should there ever be problems with the supply chains. And that, of course, means the country needs to make sure it is on friendly terms with those countries on which it depends for those food supplies. Of course, it is not.

The country is also not self-sufficient as regards energy. Without energy the whole of modern civilisation collapses.

In other words, the UK, as with other western nations, is heading towards disaster with its current policies. Europe’s lunatic politicians seem hell bent on leading their populations towards starvation with their insane attacks on agriculture. Food is a basic necessity. You prioritise its production. You dont seek to destroy it.

Look around your home. Where do all the things you use come from? If we dont produce them ourselves, we have to import them. What do we do to make the money we need to pay for those imports?

All these things are basic. Yet Europe is closing down its productive industries. We are sleep-walking back into the middle ages.

And it isn’t as though our monetary base is in good condition. Every government in Western Europe is financially on the ropes. If we dont produce anything ourselves we have to buy it from foreigners. Where is the money to come from?

In an integrated world we need to get on with our neighbours. Instead we seem to be quite deliberately doing the opposite. One doesn’t have to look further than Western Europe to see a zone that has spent the past 1500 years or more at each other’s throats. You’d think we were all fed up with fighting by now, but apparently not. Either that has to change or we are going to slide back into barbarism.

Sadly, at the moment there is not much friendliness in sight. We have a supposed union of 27 countries jostling and bickering, almost at each other’s throats as countries vie with each other to destroy their own civilisations. And those are just the countries claiming to be part of a union.

Since the continent is bursting at the seams we are seriously short of decent shelter, and because of the lax borders, we have a serious problem with unfriendly neighbours invading our shores. And a great deal of that immigration is due to the wars fomented and encouraged by the war-mongers in Washington DC.

As for interference from governments, one of the biggest problems in Western Europe is the way governments keep on interfering where they shouldn’t, causing most of us a lot of bother, unnecessary costs, and confusion, and generally aiming for a much lower standard of living due to absurd regulations which are counter productive and counter intuitive.

Reasonable health? It doesn’t matter where you are in this benighted continent, the health systems are close to collapse.

One thing I did not mention in my list of necessities was a stable currency. Sterling is a mess. The euro is in a worse mess, and the dollar is spectacularly committing suicide. Most western currencies have lost roughly 97% of their value over the course of the last 120 years.

If governments had managed the money supply properly those currencies should have appreciated over that period. I remind people that during the whole of the eighteenth century sterling did not depreciate at all. What has gone wrong since those times?

The current depreciation is worse than the statistics show. Improvements in the use of energy, and the bringing forward of a plethora of inventions should have made everything we buy and use cheaper as the improvements work through the system. I note that items which use to cost me £150 or more when I was starting out cost me half that nowadays, and the items I buy will do more, and do it quicker than fifty years ago. So why is it that the cost of living has gone in the opposite direction?

Let me reduce all this to a simple point. I mentioned earlier that the so-called developing world has on balance increased its wealth by 85% over the course of this century. Over the same period a large part of the developed world has gone in the opposite direction. We are worse off now than we were forty years ago. One has to ask if that is the desired direction we wish to go.

If we divide the world into developing countries and the stagnant West, where would we prefer to be?

I think we need to take stock of ourselves and our crumbling civilisations, and ask ourselves what the heck we are doing.

I am investing in a future. I am surrounded by people who are investing in a past. That past wasn’t so wonderful, so I am left wondering what on earth is going on.

I am considerably richer than the people around me, so what are those other people doing wrong?

However, I am certainly not happier nor am I more satisfied with my life than I was thirty-five or more years ago, and that is because I no longer recognise the world I inhabit.

Quo Vadis? Where are you going?

Well, I can see where the Collective West is going. And quite frankly, I dont want to go there at all.

I’ll give it another couple of years, but if things do not change I’m heading East.

I’m not sure I can suggest what needs to be done to rescue sanity, but I will try next week.

8m