Otherwise, Holiday’s list is pretty solid. Here’s the highlights for me.

[1] Doing less, better. … “If you seek tranquility,” [Marcus Aurelius] said, “do less.” And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only what’s essential. “Which brings a double satisfaction,” he writes, “to do less, better.”

We are all running after too much these days and I’m as guilty as anyone. Am I a political thinker, a software developer, a sports photographer or a father? And that list doesn’t mention filmmaking or writing.

My one comment on this issue – make sure you do your damn exercise every day. Your health must come first.

[3] Being a good steward of Stoicism…. Am I being honest and ethical and fair and reasonable and moderate—I try to think about all those things.

To seek to be a better person and treat others fairly is something about which every person should remind him or herself every morning. Fairness and turning the other cheek didn’t work out too well for the North American Indians, hélas, but generally it’s a good rule for life, as long as you are not dealing with a rapacious and greedy empire who covets your land and your resources and is prepared to denigrate you and your people as subhumans.⁴

[5] One small win per day is a lot. One of the best pieces of advice from Seneca was actually pretty simple. “Each day,” he told Lucilius, you should, “acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well.”

Set goals you can achieve, and achieve every day, is the way to set habits. Good habits are the path to success. My great Aunt Hilda told me as a wee lad, “routine sets you free”. She had a good point, even more applicable now. We are surrounded by too much choice and too much noise. One way to break free of distraction is to run a tight routine to which your body and your mind adapts. This means that whatever free time you have is truly free.

And if your choice is instead to change the world, you’ll have more time for that.

[6] Paying my taxes. Not just from the government. Seneca wrote to Lucilius, “All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.”There’s a tax on everything in life. You can whine. Or you can pay them gladly.

This is a great point. I am so tired of hearing from the selfish bastards who think it’s a great idea to draw social benefits they don’t require. Example: six months unemployment insurance after quitting a job held for a year, when there’s three jobs on offer. I know of at least half a dozen healthy young Europeans with higher education who have done this.

Social benefits are there for situations of need and not to be drawn when not needed. If everyone draws social benefits regardless of need, within two years there won’t be any social benefits. From the nineties, France suffered the worse dose of social benefit abuse I’ve ever seen.

What makes the people more inclined to abuse social benefits is the perception that the elite are stealing our tax resources. This applies even to me. When I see the EU apparatchiks parading around and eating in three star restaurants at my small company’s expense. They write legislation which absolves them of paying any taxes, on either cars, flats or income. When a country is run by thieves and bandits (and most of the EU has arrived here), it’s harder to find the resolve to pay all of one’s own share.

Still, roads, schools, universal health care, free (or near free) universities, law enforcement have both a cost and a value. If we are not willing to pay our taxes, we should then be prepared to live without state roads and schools. We must be willing to pay for private universities and expensive private health care. We must travel with our own armed security or be someone else’s armed security. A retreat back to the Dark Ages doesn’t attract me, whatever Randians and freepers may bleat about individualism and libertarianism.

[7] The garbage time. There’s no such thing as ‘quality’ time. Time is time. …eating cereal together late at night, laying around on the couch — is actually the best time. Forget chasing HUGE experiences. It can all be wonderful, if you so choose.

Enjoying every day is important. There may be no tomorrows. Carpe diem has been twisted to become the aphorism of Hedonists everywhere but that’s a misinterpretation of what appreciating life should be. Of course in the golden years of university, everyday experiences can be rather extraordinary. Late night visits from misguided gorgeous existentialists seeking meaning in sensuality. Unexpected fabulous conversation at any meal. Near daily stunning intellectual revelation. Yet there’s a time for everything.

Most of life – childhood, adulthood, parenthood and later life – everyday joys and small pleasures are what is on offer without harm. Enjoy them.

[8] Having a crowded table….When you flash way forward into the future, what is it? You’re not going to think about how much money you made… if your friends won’t have anything to do with you. Success, at the end of your life, is a crowded table—family and friends that want to be around you.

Entertaining and friendship were the great pastimes of the eighteenth, nineteenth and the twentieth century. It’s a pity that the pace of life and the constant translocation deprive many of us in the twenty-first century of this quotidien bliss.

Those who do live close to family should cherish their opportunities to visit and know one another well over a longer time.

I’ve lived around the world and it’s been a blessing to know French, Russian and Austrian culture from the inside. My own advice to this admonition would be to be sure to discover where you’d like to spend the rest of your life by thirty and then – stay there. Not everywhere is equal, not all people are alike. British and Slovak culture have been less good fits for my personal nature and my time in those lands have been less rewarding and correspondingly less happy. Travel if you like but always come back to home and value those friends.

Another remark I’d make here. Keeping in touch via virtual means (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Signal) is not the same as having flesh and blood interlocutors, with whom one can leave the mobiles back at home and speak truly in private. The modern world with all its different means of communication cannot truly overcome distance. What most humans need most of all is to sit around a fire and connect. The tribe.

I miss you my friends, both those of you still in this world, and those of you, beyond it. Greetings to Dima, Alyosha and Sasha wherever you wander. You are in our thoughts and our hearts.

AGuy scoffs at resistance, recommending going off the grid alone:

LOL You’re that guy going to do a citizens arrests for Hilter & Himmler in NAZI germany. Its just not going to happen.

I recommend Plan B: Go Galt, Build a homestead with the means to provide all of your basic needs. Be ungovernable & not dependent on the system.

In turn conhopco points out the obvious: “You can run, but you can not hide!” in-the-ether makes explicit the logic implicit in Joe Louis’s warning.

“going galt” is another way of saying RETREAT – fall back, try to stay out of the way.

They will NOT leave you alone. eventually we must confront this great evil. Imagine doing it before it was far too late….

in-the-ether is right. Humans do not allow other humans to hide. We are social animals and joyfully destroy the lives of individuals who leave the herd. As a concrete example, if you buy land off-the-grid and don’t participate in town meetings, what will happen is that the zoning will be changed, your taxes will be changed and you will have to sell or forfeit your property. Or the town will simply claim eminent domain and take your property for a fraction of its commercial value.⁷

Remember what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: “If only we had fought back against the security forces when we could, the Bolsheviks/Communists could never have built their totalitarian state.”⁸

Every good man (for the most part this isn’t women’s work, though there are notable exceptions) lost to attempted isolationism or passivity or slow waves of arrest and persecution makes resistance that much harder.

It seems to me the US is at a tipping point. Resist or live as frightened slaves to a “progressive”/neocon agenda. Have to give credit to the neocons here, using the progressives/woke/antifa as their brownshirts is a stroke of genius. It makes allies of people who should be part of the resistance and allows them to lurk in the shadows, starting their foreign wars, carrying on with their assassinations.

^{Image: Morris Gordon photo of Billy Conn v Joe Louis, Yankee Standium, 1946. Source, artnet sale.}

1922

‘We have already shown that in our age an enormous amount of mental and spiritual energy is used to provide for the lowest needs; we have shown how the telephone, telegraph, railway, steamboat and other things still to come have absorbed a tremendous amount of spiritual force; they are only used for the mere satisfaction of lower human needs.

Man, however, has only a certain amount of spiritual force. Now consider the following: Man has used an enormous amount of spiritual force in order to invent and construct telephones, railways, steamboats and airships, in order to further external culture. This has to be so. It would have gone badly with humanity if this had not come about. This spiritual power has also been used for many other things. Only consider how all social connections have gradually been spun into an extremely fine intellectual web. What tremendous spiritual force has been expended so that one may now draw a cheque in America and cash it in Japan. An enormous amount of spiritual force has been absorbed in this activity. These forces had once to descend below the line of the physical plane, so to speak, which separates the spiritual kingdom from the abyss.

For in a certain way man has actually already descended into the abyss, and one who studies the age from the standpoint of Spiritual Science can see by the **most mundane phenomena how this goes on from decade to decade**, how a certain point is always reached where the personality can still keep a hold on itself. If at this point it allows itself to sink down, the personality is lost, it is not rescued and lifted into the spiritual worlds.’

Rudolf Steiner – Apocalypse of John Lecture VII – 1922

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA104/English/APC1958/19080624p01.html

We’ve been messing up the world for a long time.

People quite rightly claim that mobile phones and iPads are dumbing down many children. Robbing them of focus, concentration and creativity. We forget that it’s been a long cycle down.

Great thinkers and great ideas are not in much demand these days. The tabloids clamour for billionaires and naked Instagrammers. Did God create us in his image for this? Or for the atheists among us – is the best we could have done with human existence.

The world will safely survive two million less iPads.

Photo is a portrait of Rudolf Steiner, curated by Artinmovemento.

Today there is no knowing the nature of this new Taliban patriotic government but it will reveal its spots in the next week or two.
I believe that Afghanistan under the Taliban will follow the same evolutionary cycle that almost every state in the world must follow to reach modernity and some semblance of utopia:

There will be many atrocities, barbarities, injustices and tragedies during the next few years, perhaps decades under the Taliban, just like there always is when new states are formed.

However, as long as the West (and everyone else too!) stays the hell out of that region the Afghan state will eventually modernise, along with the corresponding improvements in human rights and quality of life.

The only thing that can stop this evolutionary path towards a modern, self sufficient government of and for the Afghan people is interference from foreign powers. The kind of interference that would boot them straight back down the evolutionary cycle every time they appear to be making some progress.

The US too, emerged from "Rule By Taliban":

Picture the stoning/burning/branding of adulterers and 'immoral' women, the Salem witch trials, slavery and the lynching of blacks and others and you'll realise that even "The Greatest Country on Earth" began as something resembling a medieval theocracy.

The same with Great Britain and most European countries ... for some reason this is forgotten when it comes to Islamic countries, we in the West demand that they become immediately what we want them to become, on a schedule suitable to us while forgetting that we had thousands of years to learn from similar mistakes and the good fortune to not have our cultural evolutionary cycle interrupted too many times.

Given a few decades of peace, barring any further foreign interference, I predict Afghanistan will become a force to be admired.

Optimistic from a Western perspective but certainly on point with the historic comparison. Part of the underlying issue of Westerners judging other societies is that just as Catholic Inquisition we believe that the only path forward for humanity is our own path. Our “secular humanism” has its limitations: there’s more racial strife in the United States than almost anywhere on earth, huge incarceration rates in the United States. In most places in the West we enslave our young people from university age under mountains of debt. The United States and most of its allied governments are pushing hard for the privatisation of health care everywhere. Even in death, citizens will be parted from almost all of their assets, first to the predatory medical system and then to the taxman. What does a dying person care? What if s/he has children or grandchildren who are counting on that $300,000 or $400,000 of medical costs to buy a home for their own family? Yet another family rendered basically rootless.

This is not to say there should be no inheritance taxes. Of course there should. But there should be a fairly high minimal amount to ensure middle class families can continue to be the productive and loyal yeo(wo)men of society. Instead, Western politicians cater to the plutocrats and protect the wealthy from inheritance taxes above a certain threshold.

Westerners have certainly not solved the underlying issues of human civilisation, strife, crime and co-operation. We’ve just papered over the craps and called our neo-feudalism for plutocrats an ideal.

In reply to Arch Bungle, Roger notes this is not the first time the US and the UK have destroyed progress in the Middle East:

Sorry, but you need to actually study the history of the Middle East. In the post-WW2 period many of these nations were well on their way to modernity, including Afghanistan (the socialist regime that was overthrown by the US-backed warlords), as well as Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The West destroyed these and also directly fostered the religious fanatics (as with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan). The Saudi Arabian theocratic monarchy was put in place by the Brits and the US, and they have been the biggest funders of the Wahhabi head-choppers.

The Othering of the whole Muslim world is disgusting propaganda. Go visit Malaysia, a Moslem nation or even Iran. You will be surprised by the "modernity" there. The European nations and US only became "civilized" at home, their crimes abroad include concentration camps, Agent Orange, and the bombing of civilian targets to drive countries "back to the Stone Age" (a war crime); something now giving way as seen in France where hand grenades are used to blow off demonstrators hands and rubber bullets to blind them and a US where death by cop is a definite risk and mass shootings happen on a regular basis.

To discredit socialism, Western pundits wasted a lot of paper and now continue to waste a lot of bits maintaining that the natural order of the world is selfishness and economic self-interest. I’m not persuaded. The majority of people I’ve met in my travels around the world are not primarily motivated by money. The majority wish to live in health and peace foremost, respected within their community. Many desire that respect to border on love. In the West, these balanced people are never held up as examples of civilisation and humanity but instead we are supposed to turn our eyes to sociopaths like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Mitt Romney whose only goals from early childhood was to acquire riches and/or power.

Indeed, the question to be posed is could we do any worse? Our only get-out-of-jail-free cards so far have had the images of chaps like Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Augusto Pinochet printed on them. Strangely, these leaders were tolerated and encouraged and supported by our elites for much of their careers, much as we funded and encouraged corrupt Afghan puppet presidents Harmid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani over the last twenty years.

I’m not sure what the West can offer to the world at this point besides selfishness and dysfunction.¹⁰

Why did my dad think it was a good idea to get a lower-paying job and lower our standard of living just because he was stressed and tired? Isn’t it the parents’ job to make sacrifices for their children to be happy?

I meant to leave a two or three line answer. The process of answering the question made me think more deeply about the issue. Uncoy is generally about dance, politics, history or photography but if I’m prepared to take this question on Quora, why not here?

Others answered this question very well, with moving stories about uncles or fathers they have lost. The short and effective answer by someone who lost his father to stress: “You have your dad. Can we trade places?”

It’s really that simple. Work can kill an adult male very quickly. The stress is incredible and there are fewer and fewer outlets for sport or relaxing as you get older and have a family.

I make about one quarter of what I could make if I really pushed myself. Instead I picked my son up after school on Monday, Tuesday and today again. I spent a few hours with him on Monday and today. On Tuesday I had only an hour and a half with him due to work. Later my son will remember that I spent time with him and told him about the animals and showed him the forest and live wild boars for the first time.

If I went full out for economic success and pushed myself, I’d be dead within two years. Probably more likely six months. Your dad might be a similar case. I lost my favourite uncle very young, in large part due to pressure to perform in a high paying job with a very materially successful circle of friends and family.

How would living in a bigger house¹ or owning more cars replace moments like these, learning to cook together, climbing mountains, bike trips together?

My photos, montage Dia Takácsova

How do I know or how does your dad know we are at risk? We listen to our bodies. We can feel when we’re driving too fast, just as you can feel when a car is over its safe driving speed.

Why would you ever ask your father to risk shortening his life by tens of years ? Would the insurance money make up for his absence (assuming he had life insurance)?

Yes, the question is strange. If the issue is one between food and housing and work, I could understand your ire/frustration. But if it’s just a difference in the car you drive and the shoes you wear, it seems you are risking a lot for very little.

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus chooses to take up the same questions of alien visitation but in fictional form.

origin of life on earth disintegrating engineer in prometheus

Scott would seem to be the ideal visionary director to take us to other planets and to the future. Scott’s Blade Runner has long been my favorite film, competing strangely with Rohmer and Truffaut New Wave confections but certainly uncontested in the sci-fi and epic genre. The heart rending performance of Sean Young and enigma of Harrison Ford echo through time.

No one was a caricature. Even the replicants were living beings. Rutger Hauer etched himself into our collective consciousness with his dangerous edge as an orphaned replicant seeking a life extension. Joe Turkel as Eldon Tyrell fit well into a long line of billionaire tycoons going back to Citizen Kane seeking to control lives and life with their money.

Prometheus attempts these deep waters again. The difference between man and machine. The billionaire Tycoon. The meaning of life.

Ridley Scott has lost none of his visual touch. Prometheus is a gorgeous work, carved even in 3D. Starting as an advertising director, Scott has always adopted the latest toys with a master’s touch. Scott even had the good sense to shoot as much as possible live, which means the CGI artists have a much more solid core to built out on and the human eye is convincingly tricked, which just doesn’t happen with straight CGI. Do not underestimate the mastery and generalship involved in creating an epic like Prometheus, it’s more than a year of straight work on script, art direction, shooting, editing and effects requiring thousands of artists and technicians. Scott is one of the few directors who can pull of a project like this so efficiently (it takes James Cameron or Peter Jackson about three to five times as long to finish a project of the scope of Prometheus).

Of the big themes, the one most successfully broached is the difference between man and machine: can a machine have a soul? In Prometheus, Scott’s answer is yes. Michael Fassbender as David strives to carry on existing just like any man or woman would. Indeed, the robot servant David is the most interesting character. His anodyne subservience has its model in Shakespear’s Iago, when he poisons scientist Elizabeth Shaw’s fiancé with a biological weapon. Machines may smile and smile and still be villains.

On the other themes, Damon Lindenhof’s script lets us down for a hard fall. The opening sequence reveals a strange white giant astride a volcanic waterfall (Iceland if you’re wondering) who drinks a strange cocktail which kills him and disintegrates him. This is the beginning of life on earth. The suggestion falls apart scientifically. If aliens came to earth why would they poison themselves to start life and as they share the same DNS with humans what happened to the development of all the in between forms? And where on earth are the dinosaurs then?

It’s a nice image to start a film but it puts us firmly on the path of senselessness which carries on when the spacecraft arrives on the target planet after four years of space travel. Two thousand years ago, giant warriors died here while fleeing something. It turns out this planet is a giant biological weapons depot for the aliens who started life on earth. More a thought on the level of Transformers than Blade Runner.

When the remaining alien is awakened from stasis, he picks up and starts his spaceship to go and destroy life on earth. Well in that case what was he waiting for two thousand years? There is a scene where robot David addresses him in the ancient tongue (sounds something like Georgian). The alien appears to understand but kills them all immediately. Surely the alien would seek to gather some intelligence first before dispatching the intruder.

Roy Batty from Blade Runner

But coming up with some kind of meaningful interaction here would mean working hard on the script. Much easier to set off a huge set of fireworks and special effects instead. Returning to Blade Runner, Roy Batty tells us before his death:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.

There is none of this depth in Prometheus’s script. The closest it comes is the panic the previously sterile Shaw experiences when she realises she is pregnant with an alien life form and performs a cesarian on herself with the help of an operating capsule. It’s not that the actors aren’t up for the day: there is scant little for them to work with.

Scott’s aliens are just oversized versions of the same brutes running drone actions and dropping atomic bombs on recalcitrant subject nations. Anglo-Saxons with an albino problem. This is such a weak thesis, it’s not worthy of Scott or the original Chariots of the Gods.

There is no reason to suspect that aliens would be as small-minded, petty and vengeful as ourselves. It’s a fundamentally anthropocentric view. There is no reason to think aliens would be a close physical match to ourselves. Star Trek had better science with all kinds of different alien races including some which were truly different.

Watching Prometheus is like going to bed with a beautiful hooker. Everything is perfect but there is neither love nor feeling nor sense in the motions.  Back to Blade Runner.