Ancient Lore
of the Lemmings Dr. Whiskers, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Lemmini University Fennoscandia Welcome, students, to this lecture series at Lemmini University. Today's lecture presents a tale that's told throughout all of lemming society, during the long winter months when we huddle in our burrows, under the snow. The tale cannot be disputed because it's details have been accumulated from antiquity by thousands of lemmings, from burrows near and far. And, as we all know, the lore and oral history of lemmings cannot be questioned. We lemmings are keen observers, accurate reporters, and we never embellish or exaggerate what we see. So, listen closely, my dear students. I'll pass this tale on to you and, one day, you will pass it on to your own students, if you become a professor, or to your children. There exists, outside of our normal haunts, a race of very large creatures. They don't walk as normal animals should, but stand upright on their back legs. So large are they that their heads seem to us to be among the clouds. When one of them walks nearby, all of the ground near it bounces. Thus, we call these large and terrifying creatures bouncers. Reports of these creatures have been received from all over the world, not just from our own beloved tundra, and not just by lemmings, who never go that far away, but by other creatures as well, voles, mice, muskrats, hamsters, even rats which, although they're much less trustworthy than we are, have travelled much further. Surprisingly, their reports are in substantial agreement with what we ourselves have observed. These creatures, these bouncers, live extremely long lives, unimaginably long lives. We know this to be true because accurate descriptions of the same individuals have been given by observers over many generations of lemmings. The bouncers travel to places far beyond the tundra, riding in giant magical flying leaves or on huge, foul-smelling contrivances made from furs, rocks, and logs. Although a single bouncer can live many times the life of a lemming, we have been learning about them for countless of our own generations, and with the accumulation of the facts, our fascination knows no bounds. It has come to be accepted that these bouncers have extremely long cycles of activity, even longer than their individual lives. They will live in scattered groups for hundreds of their generations, thousands of ours but, eventually, inevitably, they begin to form enormous breeding clusters in which millions of them jam together in huge nests that they build of sticks and rocks. In those clusters, they multiply enormously. During just a few hundreds of our generations, they become more numerous than, well, than anything. Eventually, their population exceeds their habitat. Then, they're overcome by war, famine, and plague. After their period of massive reproduction ends, they die by the billions. Scholars have debated this improbable behavior for thousands of our generations but, recently, reports have begun to arrive, primarily by way of the rats, of bouncer breeding clusters of sizes that defy all powers of description. We don't understand why such behavior should periodically recur but it now seems likely that another such cycle is nearing its end. We consider the bouncers to be a lesson in our own good fortune to be lemmings, and never to have to face such a desperate population cycle. This cycle of population growth of the bouncers won't be completed during the lives of lemmings who are now alive but, within a few generations it will come to pass. We're trying, for the first time, to establish a corps of elite observers within a nearby breeding cluster, to observe the behavior of the bouncers. The collapse won't happen within our lifetimes but, hopefully, our corps of elite observers will witness the event up close, first hand, and secure for future generations of lemmings a better understanding of these amazing creatures, the bouncers. Thank you for attending this lecture, and good luck. Letters to the Editor Dear Sammy, I hope you are doing great. After reading your opening piece [Best Laid Schemes of Men and Lemmings, December, page 1], I was reminded of many different thoughts and ideas that I have had in the past. I would like to comment on them, not in any particular order. I have watched numerous documentaries over the years that deal with population control. Since this issue is huge, most shows pick a fact or an idea and present it in a limited way. Understandably, they are all incomplete. However, some facts remain for our consideration. China tried population control as part of the Cultural Revolution and it didn't work. After 50+ years of Zero Population growth their society was crashing. They had several hundred million old people with no one to care for them. So, either it doesn't work or they mismanaged it. I don't know the answer. Another personal curiosity is how will it all play out for the Human Species. Will it be an S curve or a J curve? I think it will be the J Curve.
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That seems to be the historical path for species that are way, way out of control. Here's a really important fact about everything we do. And I am sure that you already know this. Maybe not everyone does. Everything that we do is about money. You stated that, "Everything, marketing strategies, stock investments, retirement plans, entitlement programs, safety nets, insurance, interest payments, loans, mortgages, everything requires growth." I played an interesting game. I reread your article and replaced the phrases "population growth" and "growth" with the word "money". I found it to be very enlightening. And that's it. If you have enough money you can position yourself and your descendants to survive anything. Finally, I thought that when our species does crash, we will have something that the Ancients didn't have. Memories. Memories of science and technology and medicine. And then I realized that this is exactly what the Ancients DID have. All of the knowledge about science, art, architecture, and medicine that was possessed by ancient civilizations was remembered knowledge. It remains an interesting idea that history does repeat itself. That's all for now. Hope you have a great tomorrow.... —T. M., Winter Park, Florida One of the things that we can infer from Commoner's Four Laws of Ecology is that everything affects everything else. In this particular instance, population growth drives financial growth while financial growth drives population growth. It might be reasonable to call such a thing a Ponzi loop. It’s a self-sustaining thing, and we’re trapped in it. For a whimsical view of the growth obsession, see Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief: A Satirical Essay, in Pharos. I speculate that population control in China failed because it was attempted concurrently with a transition to a growth-dependent economy. Also, I don't believe that all financial systems necessarily require growth. Ours is fatally mismanaged such that it can’t function otherwise. There are two ideas that are common to every human culture: a past golden age and lost knowledge. The survivors of the next collapse, and their descendants, won't do as well as did those of the previous collapse. The reason is that we haven't stored our knowledge durably, as did the ancestors of the previous survivors. One small example is the picture of a helicopter carved on the wall at Abydos. See Still the Best Medicine, on pages 1 and 2 of the October 2014 issue. Our methods of recording knowledge are so fragile that, when the lights go out, the knowledge will disappear with the light. Many times, the survivors of past collapses have tried to pass information on to their descendants. After a few thousand years, it all degenerates into myth, legend, and religion. Because of the fragile nature of our records, our descendants will lose far more information than did those of the previous collapse. An appreciation of that fragility can be obtained from the documentary series Life After People. —editor Dear Sam, So, you picked a couple of great topics to relay into the world in your Dec. 2019 Frontiersman. You and I have briefly spoken on these topics. As to the world overpopulation problem [Best Laid Schemes of Men and Lemmings, page 1], I loved your reference to "Soylent Green", 1972, Charlton Heston, great movie. Reading your article came at a great time because I recently read a couple stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, I read 2BR02B, (to be or naught to be), and The Big Trip Up Yonder, both stories make strong references to overpopulation, population control, and voluntary suicide to keep population manageable. In 2BR02B, if you want to have a child you have to find someone who will volunteer to be medically killed so the population remains capped. Should you have unexpected twins, you would have to find another volunteer suicide, or the newborn gets the ride in the brass handle sedan. Your mention of Retroreport on PBS doesn't surprise me. I've read the same thing. Japan and Germany claim due to a decreasing population, that by 2100 A.D., there won't be enough people to fill the jobs required to run smoothly. Now, hold on, re-read what I just wrote. Do these governments saying this think we are retards? It's the most oxymoronic statement of all time. If the population gets smaller, wouldn't the need for a work force get smaller too, as there will be less need to juxtaposition of population and services rendered? Should a graph be kept, shouldn't the lines be somewhat parallel, right? You don't need an equal or greater work force if the community gets smaller. Just look to the ghost towns of rural America for confirmation. In reality, here's the real problem. Capitalism is killing the country. Governments are being run like corporations, and the rich are becoming so rich and the poor are becoming so poor, with no middle class, here's what's going to happen. When people become poor, what's the one thing that's fun to do that they can
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afford? The answer is to fuck.
When you have the "majority" over sexing you have a population boom.
Resources are finite, and you have a "die-off". You want proof, just
look at Africa, people have been starving to death there for how long?
In the 1980's, in one conflict alone, 300,000 died from starvation. They made the movie Black Hawk Down about that one. And look what America
went and did brought back slavery, by ways of the 13th amendment, all they have to do is give up 25 to life sentences for crimes that don't justify the sentence, and force us to work industry jobs, where the state saves and makes money on our labor and we don't even get workman's comp if we get hurt. And the cherry on top, our families get financially "raped" by the phone companies, commissary, and food package services. The companies and private prisons are even publicly traded on the Dow and Nasdaq, and you hear Trump tout how great our economy is. Bullshit, all the stock market shows is how the rich are getting richer, while, if the
stock market did fall, like in the 20's, most of America wouldn't know
the difference because they're below the poverty line. Shit, Marxism
is better than the bullshit our government is selling us. Sovereignty
is the answer, but we allowed the government too much power and the beast
is too big now. I hate to say it Sam, but this world needs a
good die-off, because if this is living, then go ahead and turn me
into a Soylent Green wafer. Now, as for your article, Intelligent Alternative [December, page 2], consider this. Our country is becoming more and more a police state, whose government is declaring war on its citizens, "war on drugs", "war on crime", etc., instead of offering a junkie help with rehab, they declare "war" on him for using a drug to escape his poverty, and kill or put him in prison for the rest of his useful life. I mention this because, in your mention of self-driving cars, police are going to weaponize cars one day. [See Carnet: Rise of the Machines, in the June 2018 issue.] A programmer told me recently that, with all the "swipe" and "touch screens" technology today in phones, that it would be easy to install sensors under the steering wheels and door handles, and through your phone, get your fingerprints when you peruse the internet, and through phone records, they could match prints to names. Imagine, you get a warrant put out for your arrest. Because the new cars have facial recognition and "touch" surfaces that work in tandem with police the car doors lock and without you having any control, auto drives you to a police for arrest. Imagine, the very car you let drive you around, monitoring your every movement, recording video, recording audio, reporting to big brother, and your car will be prosecution's witness in convicting you. And lastly, about that What on Earth episode you watched. I was disturbed by "2" things about the two photos. The smudged photo was smudged, not because of local burglaries. That makes no sense. The smudge affects the one posted photo not future satellite viewing through Google Earth. So what I want to know what was in that photo, that day, at that time that needed hidden. I'm sure it was something recognizable from above, maybe your "unknown agency" [See Unnamed Agency, in The Sovereign's Library.] was doing a body delivery or disposal. And most disturbing, in the clear photo, something is seriously sinister. You can see the cleared rectangle, roads going around the perimeter, fence lines, etc., so, if this is a junk yard, parking lot, why have the patch of uncleared forest in the middle, surrounded by fence? Maybe your unknown agency locks up their "missing people", who later are killed there by rich people hunting expeditions. I know that sounds crazy but, why? We pee-on's are mere cattle to the rich and our government, why not hunt us for amusement? Look at the 2nd (clear) photo closely Sam. The cars are parked with a semblance of conformity. But look at the helicopters. It looks like they were landed "free-willy" style, like the way private pilots would land, who are ferrying the rich around. The pictured lot almost looks like a "maze", a hunter's paradise. Release the prey, 5 minute head start. I don't know, but the "forest" in the fence line makes zero sense. Any who I shall close, Sam my friend, stay healthy and happy. Your Friend, —S. H., a prisoner As jobs keep being replaced by technology we'll need fewer and fewer workers, at least per capita if not in total. I see the possibility of a world with 9 billion people in it, and nothing for them to do. The governments aren't worried about work not getting done. They're aware that their world-wide Ponzi scheme will fail, due to a lack of continued growth at the bottom. I don't believe that capitalism is ruining the country. I believe that the greedy misuse of capitalism, mostly by way of unsustainable banking and marketing practices, is ruining the country. See my essays about money, taxes, and corporations, in Pharos. Actually, most governments really are corporations. See The Long and Winding Doc
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trine: Social Contract, in Pharos. All governments
are overcreatures. See A Mind of its Own, in the January 1998 issue. —editor Hey Sam, I wanna tell ya, a few years ago, I heard about a weird design flaw in all vehicles equipped with OnStar, you see if you're involved in a head-on collision, and your airbags are deployed, OnStar is supposed to alert emergency rescue vehicles to your location. But the design flaw that automakers didn't consider was that your battery is located up in the front, and if that battery is damaged on impact then there will be no electricity to your OnStar to get you any help. But to remedy this serious design flaw, I had heard that they were considering installing a 2nd small backup battery, that would be located somewhere in the very center of the vehicle, where it would be less likely damaged during front or rear high impact crashes. Have you ever heard of this? Has the design problem been fixed yet? —Howie in the Max Two years ago, I saw a TV commercial in which a cop was following a car. Speaking into his radio, he instructed OnStar to blink the lights. The tail lights on the car ahead blinked. The cop said that it was the right car, upon which OnStar disabled the car. It coasted to the side of the road. I mentioned the commercial in A Question of Intelligence, in the January 2017 issue. It's another good example of a claim that I've made before. That is, there's more good information about the state and direction of the country in the TV commercials than there is on the network news. I don't know if OnStar fixed the flaw that you mentioned. —editor Congratulations on 26 years, Sam! I read with trepidation your article about the population bomb [Best Laid Schemes of Men and Lemmings, in the December issue]. Thanks! —Tom from Redwood City The congratulations that he mentioned refers to 26 years of continuous publication of this newsletter, as of December, 2019. —editor Dear Sam: In a recent letter [November issue, page 2], I said that I thought that Karl Marx was mostly right. My words were ill-chosen. I should have said that Karl Marx presented some significant truths, and that those truths shed light on our current economic situation. I did not mean to imply that I embrace communism, as that term is commonly understood. I think that the regimes of such despots as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot blot the history of humanity. I also reject Marx's anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and the dialectical materialist dogma that he derived from the philosopher Hegel. Despite all that, I think that Marx's views on the formation, structure, and development of capitalism are enlightening. I judge them to have as much explanatory value as the theories of such free-market fundamentalists as Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer. —Sir Donald the Elusive SNHUSam Aurelius Milam III Southern New Hampshire University has a TV commercial in which the claim is made that "the world in which we live, equally distributes talent...." I have the same talent as Sarah Chang? Stephen Hawking? Larry Niven? Don't be ridiculous. It's a stupid idea and a stupid statement. I'd advise attending a different university than SNHU. Welcome to Documentaryland Stray Thoughts
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