August was a busy month, a good month. On August 4th we had a clear view from our terrace of a tornado over the lake. We have many big thunderstorms here but this is the only tornado we have ever seen.
August 7, 2020 was my birthday which I celebrated in my own special way, as described in the article I wrote.
I worked on adding content to this website and my focus was My Childhood Hurts and My Experience with Pa.
Although I am generally experiencing better mental health than before the coronavirus crisis, I did have one bad day with considerable anxiety. Nothing went right. I had problems with my computer, my printer, with amazon.com.mx and with HSBC. Looking back, they were mostly resolved later but irritated me greatly at the time. Anxiety is a battle I continue to fight.
I had two interesting conversations on the Letter platform, On The Dark Night of the Soul and On Intersectionality & Baby Boomers and Millennials.
The Ajijic Book Club had a delightful Zoom meeting with 12 attendees discussing Three Years in Ethiopia: How a Civil War and Epidemics Led Me to My Daughter by Connie Davis. The interaction between the mother and the daughter was beautiful. As usual, I wrote a book report which I published on the ABC website.
I wrote and published another essay, About the Metacrisis, posted on August 31, 2020.
On August 23, 2020 I wrote a second Open Letter to El Ojo del Lago.
I watched most of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention, except one evening when the rain knocked out the satellite signal. As someone who leans left politically, I was much more impressed with the DNC. But I would like to express what I really think. Imagine a scale from 0 to 10. The scale measures how well each party understands the problems the USA faces and offers a reasonable solution. On such a scale I would rate what I saw from the RNC a 1 and what I saw from the DNC a 2. What the country needs are people at a 7 or 8. In other words, it is my opinion that the party elite and their supporters are badly out of touch and it will not make much difference which side wins in the long term. But I think a second term for Trump would accelerate the negative trends of the past four years. And the betting odds have taken a disturbing turn.
Readings
There seemed to be numerous articles of interest this month which I want to include in this record.
From a COVID-19 Recession to COVID-19 Depression? by George Friedman
I have argued that unless a solution is found by September, the probability that the recession could turn into a depression would mount... Depression scares me. It creates not only vast human suffering but also political monstrosities. It is clear at this point that the current medical solution will remain in place until there is a vaccine. It is also clear that even with the best of luck a vaccine will not be fully produced, distributed and injected to a degree necessary or in time for the current solution to be improved. By that time, the economy will be in a very dangerous condition, if it is still salvageable. But the sooner a vaccine is found the less the danger will be. It should be remembered that after the European and American depressions of the 1920s and 1930s, there was not only political extremism but also war. History does not repeat itself, which is a great comfort – save that, as Mark Twain pointed out, it does rhyme.
The New Nuclear Threat by Jessica T. Mathews
Seventy-five years ago, at 8:16 on the clear morning of August 6, the world changed forever. A blast equivalent to more than 12,000 tons of TNT, unimaginably larger than that of any previous weapon, blew apart the Japanese city of Hiroshima, igniting a massive firestorm. Within minutes, between 70,000 and 80,000 died and as many were injured. Hospitals were destroyed or badly damaged, and more than 90 percent of the city’s doctors and nurses were killed or wounded. By the end of the year, thousands more had died from burns and radiation poisoning—a total of 40 percent of the city’s population.
The mushroom cloud became a universal symbol of horror.
During the coronavirus crisis, other important issues get little coverage.
COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse. by Bill Gates
I realize that it’s hard to think about a problem like climate change right now... But the fact that dramatically higher temperatures seem far off in the future does not make them any less of a problem—and the only way to avoid the worst possible climate outcomes is to accelerate our efforts now.
Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against by Timothy M. Lenton, Johan Rockström, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.
The Thin Veneer of American Civilization by Victor Davis Hanson
The Sixties generation is going out as it came in: gross, loud, and cowardly, destroying the very institutions for others that it so selfishly consumed for its own benefit. If we wish to know why America’s veneer of civilization was so thin, and this year so easily scraped away, revealing barbarism beneath, look to a generation’s architects in the university, the media, sports, corporations, and politics who long ago seeded their cultural IEDs and are now giddy they are at last going off, though terrified that the ensuing blasts are reverberating ever closer to home.
Yes, This Is a Revolution by Abe Greenwald
The revolution’s most exploitable weakness is that it is wrong... As a factual matter, America is a vigorous democratic republic—the freest and least prejudiced country of this or any time... And because the United States is fundamentally good, most Americans may, in time, become circumspect about tearing it all down.
From time to time I read a conservative point of view, such as the National Review or Commentary.
QAnon Supporter Who Made Bigoted Videos Wins Ga. Primary, Likely Heading To Congress by Camila Domonoske
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a construction executive, won 57% of the vote in Georgia's heavily-Republican 14th Congressional District... President Trump congratulated Greene on Wednesday morning, calling her a "future Republican Star" who is "strong on everything."
I continue to be concerned with the growth of QAnon.
What You Need to Know About GPT-3 And Why It Matters by Fahri Karakas
I read about 50 articles and blog posts on GPT-3...
Singularity is the point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in an ‘intelligence explosion’. It means the end of human civilization as we know it and the beginning of something new.
When singularity occurs, non-human intelligent agents (AI powered robots and machines) will continually upgrade themselves and enter a “runaway reaction” of never-ending and accelerating self-improvement cycles. They will invent technological tools that will be more sophisticated and advanced than anything we witness or imagine today.
I continue to be concerned with the development of artificial intelligence.
I continue to read all the essays Charles Eisenstein writes, which is not many so I can easily keep up. I caught some of the news coverage of Dr. Stella Immanuel. Eisenstein adds a very interesting non-mainstream perspective.
The Banquet of Whiteness by Charles Eisenstein
An attitude of cultural respect wouldn’t be so quick to write off a medical tradition with thousands of years of clinical experience and refinement practiced by literally hundreds of thousands of doctors... None of this is to say that modern medicine has nothing to offer traditional cultures... Our present historical moment is one of transition in our mythology, in the basic narratives by which we know self and world. Having corroded the other cultures of the world, it now dissolves itself.
I continue to read Umair Haque since I discovered him in June. I continue to believe he has important things to say. But I do not like his tone, too dogmatic, and for me this is always a caution flag.
The Walking Apes Who Destroyed the World by Umair Haque
Let me summarize all that. We walking apes are in terrible, terrible pain. It’s the deepest kind of pain — existential pain. We have no answers to any of our great questions, and there don’t appear to be any answers. The terror of all that, that void, drives us mad with rage and frustration and meaninglessness. We invent excuses — we’re the chosen ones of the person in the sky. This shiny toy or that ideology of supremacy will let me forget all about the fact I’m going to die and nobody knows why! — but they don’t work.
And as if I did not already have enough reading material, I have discovered two more writers that I am finding very interesting - Will Franks and Caitlan Johnstone
Freedom in the Age of Collapse by Will Franks
I personally feel that it is my task to join that global community and do everything I can to help it break through the barriers and chart the way to collective survival, and ultimately, freedom. But it’s the personal barriers that are right up there in my face, every day, when I go to do this work. It’s my existential fears and anxieties which define my relationship to life, death — and collapse. One of the toughest barriers here is the denial of death, which causes us to shut out the looming threat of human extinction.
Normal Has Failed. Be As Weird As You Like. by Caitlin Johnstone
A wild divergence from our current trajectory is the only hope our species has for survival, so as a member of our species it is your duty to participate in that divergence in any way that looks healthy to you. Our civilization as it exists today is a dead man walking. Do not dance with dead men.