Speculation

           As speculation has become in vogue as of late, I will engage in my own speculation, on the topic of speculation as well at what follows speculation. This is all speculative, of course, but I think it will age quite well and be good speculation rather than bad speculation. In fact, I’m so sure of myself that this speculation cannot really be called speculation at all, but until it is proven not to be speculation, and rather fact before fact, it will be seen as speculation and so I will call it speculation. And, on the small nonexistent chance that I am wrong, I will have covered myself quite nicely by saying what I’m saying is speculation and not fact, as being wrong about speculation is part of the game of speculation. With that said, I will now begin my speculative essay on speculation with regards to the nature of speculation.

            Speculation is a valid form of activity in its proper context. That context is one where somebody who is intelligent and has some edge or knack for seeing things which are not easily seen can pre-emptively position himself to benefit from some event that has not yet happened. It is gambling, in that there are always unknowns and cloudy variables which make a speculative bet risky or uncertain in some manner, but the return on the bet being correct is disproportionate to the risks and uncertainties which might lead the bet being incorrect. Speculation is largely seen as an economic activity, and this economic speculation is the focus of this activity, but we all engage in speculation in our day to day lives with financial and non-financial choices, since we do not know all variables in life or our environment.

            Economic speculation is something that should generally be left to experts and smart people who have some edge in some form. The general public does not fit this category; the general public is quite dumb, emotional, and led by their nose by external impulses which push them this way and that. It is not flattering, but the general public are pigs rolling around in slop and feces more than sentient beings with choices emanating from somewhere inside them. As such, it is a disturbing sign of some underlying societal issue when these pigs start focusing on speculation. That is what is now occurring.

            To the general public, speculation is gambling. It is like going to a casino and betting at the roulette table. There are TA charts and blogs and podcasts that the general public interfaces with in the process of speculation, but these are all pretty much emotional and psychological justifications for behavior that is just gambling. These things help the general public tell themselves that they are not gambling -- that they are not trying to find an “easy fix” to money, that they are doing something respectable instead of degenerate and desperate.

            The main issue with the general public’s increasing interest in “speculation” (gambling), whether that be in the form of stocks or now crypto-currency, is not the “speculation” (gambling) itself, but rather what is causing the increasing interest. There is an inherent risk factor associated with speculation that makes it something which most normal people averse to doing. This risk aversion, although it is overly strong in most people, is a natural and smart evolutionary trait that is prudent in its proper amount.

Most people are afraid to take any risks at all, so for speculation to rise in general popularity there has to be some fundamental problem causing them to throw caution to the wind. That problem is that the middle class is dying, and nearly everybody in it can sense this on a fundamental level. The traditional means to make a living with some dignity or self-respect have all but been removed for those without family members with connections to government or equally corrupt orgs. There are no longer easy slots to fill that allow for any decent standard or living, or more accurately those slots are quickly disappearing or being sectioned off to a lucky few. Everybody outside of protected clans knows that any security they have is going the way of the Dodo and will soon be extinct.

With job security and career dignity a thing of the past, people who are paying attention know that they cannot ensure any decent standard of living for themselves -- and especially not their children – if they continue living the status quo life pushed on them. Things might be hard now, but they’re going to get increasingly hard as time goes on. This is an anxiety or panic or fear generating realization, and in times of fear or panic, risk aversion begins to be overridden, and as this risk aversion is overridden, things like speculation become attractive. If you think you’re going to die if you don’t have a million dollars in the next hour and you only have half a million right now, the most logical course of action becomes going to the casino and betting on roulette. If you lose it doesn’t matter. If you win you survive. That is the logic and motivation behind the general public’s increasing interest in stocks and cryptocurrency, even though most of them don’t realize it yet.

As goes with degenerate gambling, general public speculation ends in varying degrees of disaster and ruin for most people who engage in it. This current and growing wave of speculation (really just gambling) will end in varying degrees of disaster and ruin for most people. Unfortunately, there is also the tendency for those who take unwise risks not to broadcast their unwise risks and the results of those risks, so as more and more people negatively impact their lives through degenerate and unwise gambling they call speculation, their outcome won’t be spread or pushed to warn people considering doing the same thing who will, on the whole, end up with the same negative outcome. Also, those who take risky and unwise bets that luck into being right will be focused on and serve to amplify the greed and misplaced hope for success which will further pull people on the edge into bad choices that they would otherwise refrain from choosing.

As with any game that is partially skill based and partially luck, the longer it goes on, the more that people who are actually relying on skill rather than luck will win. There will be large portions of the public who luck into good bets with crypto or stocks, but most of these people will stay in the game long enough that their gambling driven approach punishes them and all their initial winnings are redistributed to professionals who don’t make up the general public. We are still in the period where people are making bad bets that pay off enough that they think they’re making good bets, and this furthers interest in speculation for the general public, but eventually the odds will be ground out over enough iterations that nearly everybody in the general public is punished harshly.

 Eventually, and this has not yet happened yet, the air of speculation that has turned everybody into a daytrader and the next Gordon Gecko or Jordan Belfort (who made their money through corruption, lies, and illegal behavior rather than gambling) will turn sour. Just as greed and dreams of success have filled the air to drown out the base level desperation that is coating everything and everyone in the middle class, realization that losing the speculation game is possible will eventually replace the greed and dreams of success. At that point, panic will set in and people will rush to exit markets and do whatever they can to close their positions. This will be quite ironic in its own way, as this is the time to generally buy stocks or cryptocurrencies, as things will become quite undervalued and people will be making poor decisions. Once again, the normal people who have tricked themselves into thinking that stocks or crypto will save them from their impending doom will self-harm in the form of leaving speculation entirely, and the people who are professional and actually speculating will benefit.

Greedy bubbles of speculation are nothing new, but this current bubble of speculation (which is just getting started even though it will pop before it bubbles to its full size) is motivated more by despair than greed. The greed is a gold leaf wrapping hiding the core, which is desperation. The desperation is not loud enough yet, it is not visible enough yet, but eventually it will be. Unlike other bubble pops, there is no functional or healthy economy to return to. There is no institutional integrity that will allow for people to pick up the pieces. Those who go bust in the market will quickly realize that even though they haven’t died from losing on their speculation (really degenerate gambling), they might as well be dead. This is when despair will really set in. This is where the implicit future becomes explicit, where the fears and misgivings about the future are realized and made manifest.

This is where drug addicts and explicit gamblers become the norm. This is the failure mode that doesn’t end. This is when the people who deluded themselves into thinking their stocks and crypto gambling was “fundamentals” or information based and honorable realize they were just gambling and either kill themselves, work some miserable job and live in poverty until they die, or self-actualize as a gambler and go to explicit gambling. The people who kill themselves or consign themselves to a life of a peasant with crushed dreams don’t  matter, they have essentially removed themselves from the speculation equation, but the ones who self-actualize now begin to feed the beast that is the vice industry, specifically gambling institutions.

Once again, this final phase of public speculation manias, naked gambling, is fundamentally different than prior public speculation manias. Firstly, it is different because of the fact that there is no real path to recovery or gainful, dignified employment. This makes the naked gambling more sticky and drawn out than in other times. Lastly, and more impactful, is the fact that gambling has been digitized and can now be accessed from home. Furthermore, states across the USA where this speculation bubble is really taking root and blooming are all beginning to loosen their restrictions on or legalize digital gambling. Over the coming years and decades, most of the losers of the public speculation mania, and there will be tons, will turn to gambling and other forms of vice that afflict those with no hope.

As such, if you want to speculate, buy stocks like Penn National with strong public figures that are doing online gambling in the USA and will take the lions-share of the people who get their hopes and dreams and futures crushed by their speculation (really degenerate gambling) in the coming months, years, and decades. This is not financial advice, and if you want real financial advice then just work on something real and create value, then slowly put money into crypto and stocks and forget about them for a few decades. It is also not moral advice, as making money from vice industries probably puts a karmic curse on you and your children and their children that isn’t worth whatever you make. There is no good future coming and the current bull markets and speculation mania is going to end in tears and pain. The best thing you can do is disengage from it unless you have some unique perspective and intuition and are willing to lose everything. Protect your future and invest your energy into actual projects and endeavors that produce value. Everything is only going to get harder, most people aren’t going to have a good life, every second you waste daydreaming about riches or becoming the next Wolf of Wall Street is years of work that your grand-children will have to do to have any dignity in life.

Fermentation

             As I have written before, the creation of great works of art such as paintings, murals, statues, or classical music are warning signs of a decaying or stagnant society. These things are indicative that people who were once engaged in struggles or in an environment that took up their time and had harsh selection have entered a period where things have relaxed in some serious manner to allow for leisure and introspection. While the works created in this period can be inspiring or beautiful or admirable, these works signal a transition of growth to stagnation and sloth. For all the great art and cultural artifacts created, the vast majority of people are not putting the easiness and wealth of that time to use in a beneficial manner. Soon thereafter, a collapse or at least some sort of serious decay, both social and biological is almost guaranteed to occur.

            This essay is not about art, but rather philosophy. Philosophy and writing in general can be creative and artistic, but it is more analytical in nature. The people who engage in it and are good at it are generally suited to be engineers or managerial people of sorts. The people who do philosophy or writing poorly are irrelevant and are seen in every age and condition, just like there are bad painters, sculptors, or musicians in every era and condition in every type of society.

            If you look at when Greek philosophy reached its peak, when Roman “philosophy” (I say it in quotes because it was a poor legalistic imitation of Greek philosophy) reached its peak, when German philosophy reached its peak, and when French philosophy reached its peak, you will see that this was right before or at the beginning of decay and eventual mediocrity. The same pattern is visible across geography and time because the same mechanics are at play: philosophy peaks when the options for real thinkers and people interested what is true have been removed in the traditional sense. When honesty, when opportunity for success without sucking up or sucking off, when creativity and generative are no longer rewarded by a society, then philosophy begins to bloom. The truly excellent thinkers with unique perspectives and backbones, the people who don’t want to do a job for money or social adulation, begin to self-select out of society and choose a life that is inwardly directed, that is a sign that that society is headed nowhere good.

            This process is a molting of sorts -- or more accurately fermentation. The underlying forces driving the society have shifted from positive and rewarding people who have characteristics which are honorable, to rewarding the corrupt or evil people who have characteristics which are dishonorable. At first, the honorable people in the society make a good faith effort to fix the society or reform it, but if this does not work (and it almost never does, especially now that everything is so interconnected) then eventually the futility of this project is realized, and these honorable people give up trying to fix the external and instead focus on the internal. Something shifts in the air, the spirit of the society is shown to be fundamentally unsalvageable, and this is the fermentation.

            This fermentation is spiritual or psychic in nature, but it functions much like fermentation of food works. Underlying flavors are revealed in ways they were invisible prior to the fermentation. In the context of philosophy, this means that things which were hidden become visible. Through free time and disconnection on a fundamental level, thinkers are able to examine relationships and dynamics that were unable to be examined when society was more positive on the surface level. I say surface level, because the values and structure of society are phenomenological in nature and are simply time-lagged symptoms of underlying, deeper mechanics that are not really changing. Much like fermentation, the materials holding together and structuring society get broken down and fit each other much more loosely, that which was once nuanced becomes obvious, and in its obviousness, its mechanics are revealed in ways which they could not be revealed prior.

            America seems to be beginning this stage that Greece, Roman, German, and French societies went through and finished. I focus on those specific societies because those are the ones I am most familiar with, but I’m sure this stage is common across all cultures and peoples who were once successful or impressive in some manner but now linger in stagnation and mediocrity. At this point, there is so much obvious corruption and nepotism that the only people interested in traditional careers or status in the American system are very sickly or stupid people. Anybody with sincere or impressive aspirations, anybody who is not a slave to social status or willing to suck off middle managers and crawl on all fours in front of deranged despots, anybody who has a soul, knows that there is nothing to be gained or earned in an honorable way in the traditional American system. As such, there does seem to be a spark of intellectual perspective by people in America who know they don’t have any traditional path to success or comfort with their dignity intact.

Perhaps I am just talking about myself, and I am before my time and there is nobody besides myself in America who is actually making interesting works of art or examining interesting ideas in a generative manner, but I am too humble to assume that to be the case. While I am the only one I know who really is examining issues in a fundamental manner which can be considered exceptional or noteworthy, I assume that there are others around my age that are similar in talents and output as me, who are simply not known to me yet. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am just ahead of my time, but I do know that it is only matter of time until there are many people like me who emerge from America, because America is entering this period of pre-death, this period of molting or fermentation, where analytical and creative people seemingly pop out of nowhere because those analytical and creative people have been locked out of participating in a corrupt and disgusting society.

This philosophical fermentation that I have been born into or am a preview of is the second to last stage in a society’s death. The realization that this society cannot be salvaged, that most people are hopeless and self-destructive, that all governmental and authoritative institutions are either completely corrupted or inevitably on their path to complete corruption, is something I have arrived at and people like me will arrive at, but most people will be incapable of internalizing until things get much worse. America as a society is a dead man walking, it is a shambling corpse. While this period of fermentation develops, the corpse will continue to shamble and great works of art and philosophy will be created, but eventually things will get so bad that the most obvious dullard will be unable to hide from the truth of the impending death of society. At that point, the fermentation or molting will end, the works of art will end, and complete despair and loathing (both internal and external) will begin. That is the final, the death of culture, the death of creativity. At that point, self-cannibalization will begin, and there will be no time for meandering philosophical works or artistic projects which last for years, people like me will go from analyzing to being forced to fight survive as the population will be turned against itself and everybody will be an enemy combatant of sorts. After that occurs, some form of dead equilibrium will be arrived at, and America’s society will be a zombie much like Greece, Italy, Germany, and France have zombie societies. Until that happens, however, enjoy the fermentation.

Rush Limbaugh

     Rush Limbaugh died at the age of 70 today on February 17^th, 2021. For those not familiar with him or those reading this at a later date where he’s not very well known, he was a radio commentator who discussed politics from a nominally conservative position. His main appeal, at least to me and the people who liked him, was that he was an interesting communicator, had a good voice, and also had a very enjoyable although understated sense of humor. I’m sure there were people who hung on his every word for political analysis, but my main enjoyment of his work was that he would talk about things going on in an enjoyable manner.

            I haven’t listened to him regularly ever since I graduated from Hollywood, a little less than a decade ago at this point, because he was mainly something to listen to while driving with your parents or on a commute. He was essentially the best mainstream right wing radio entertainment option for the lower middle class and middle class white people across America with nominally conservative views. I say nominally conservative, because at this point it is quite clear that very little conservatives have ever done or stood for have conserved anything in America. His fairly lukewarm and non-extreme views of reality are not really worth demonizing or praising him for, but as he kind of existed and established himself prior to the internet and more extreme or pure versions of right wing thought were able to flourish, Limbaugh got quite a reputation as a sort of extremist or horrible person in the mainstream. As such, which should not surprise anybody who has seen the lack of bipartisan empathy that exists in humanity, Limbaugh’s death has resulted in jeering and mean-spirited jokes by those on the left. This is not really upsetting to me, as I’m not particularly upset he is dead even though I did not wish death on him, but this mean-spiritedness should be mentioned as a matter of record.

            This essay is not really meant as a biographical or reminiscent piece, although Limbaugh was culturally relevant and successful enough that he does merit remembrance in some form. The focus of this essay relates more to thinking about what Rush accomplished, what he did not accomplish, and what his death is a sign of, which is the ending of a comfortable lie that most white people and conservatives as well as liberals have had the blessing and curse to live ever since the end of World War 2.

            What did Limbaugh accomplish? Objectively speaking, he did not accomplish all that much on the macro scale. On an individual level however, Limbaugh made a name for himself and did his job extremely well for a impressively long time. He certainly lucked into having a voice extremely suited for radio, but a voice is not all it takes to maintain popularity and relevance for decades. Limbaugh had a work ethic and grounded sense of self which were admirable. This was evident not only in his staying power, but also his ability to take and make jokes as previously mentioned. In terms of longevity, the only two people who matched him were Larry King and Howard Stern, and both of those people were largely “on the side” of the dominant forces of humanity at large. Limbaugh managed to preserve his career and legacy in a manner that cannot be lucked into. He had a few scandals and mishaps, but for the most part Limbaugh displayed extreme competency and consistency that are worth trying to emulate. As a result, Limbaugh became insanely wealthy and successful. Now he’s dead, so that doesn’t really matter, but it is worth noting.

            What didn’t Limbaugh accomplish? He didn’t change anything. Limbaugh didn’t really help anything. He served as a pressure release valve. He was a sort of anesthetic for the lower middle class and middle class that were and continue to be squeezed. It was enjoyable to turn on the radio and listen to somebody who seemed like the voice of sanity, but what did this really do besides provide some sort of temporary relief from the mainstream media and the government and the financial institutions exploiting and abusing people who listened to Rush? There was no real action that came from Limbaugh, there was no fundamental change that came from Limbaugh, the people who loved Rush and the people who hated Rush were essentially wasting their time paying attention to Rush. Limbaugh was not the devil, but he was also not an angel, he was an entertainer who did not change the course of the country in any meaningful manner.

            What does Rush Limbaugh’s death mean for anything? It is the end of an era of sorts. There is really nobody who can replace Rush Limbaugh, and what’s more the context in which people are growing up is not really amenable to the content that Rush Limbaugh made. All the things that used to be funny jokes are now realities. There are very few people who believe that anything can be solved through discussion, even fewer that believe that America is headed in some positive direction and simply needs a little commentary and nudges here or there to stay on the right course, and both of those groups of people are shrinking as every year passes. Monoculture of any sort has been shattered by the internet its democratized distribution mechanisms, and radio, television, and movies are dying industries. With Rush Limbaugh’s death the last illusions that we are headed anywhere comfortable or familiar are also dying. Soon, it won’t just be Rush who is dead. Soon, all the well-known TV and radio hosts who made their careers in a much nicer, much cleaner, much more prosperous first world will be dead. Nominally left and nominally right alike, the well-meaning but deluded milquetoast media figures and spokespeople will soon be dying.

            We are in a transitionary period of humanity, where the psychic is gaining dominance over the physical, but we are now entering another, more familiar and predictable transition, a generational transition. The institutions and industries which have been clogged up and are currently run by greedy geriatrics that refuse to step down will soon see a lot of their “leadership” dying off or becoming disabled to the point of being forced out of their positions. Positions will be vacated, not in the honorable way like a torch being passed down as was done in prior generations -- that opportunity for honorable transition of power has been completely rejected by the rotting walking corpses currently in power – but rather in a chaotic and unstable manner. Millennials and Gen X and Gen Z people have not been mentored or taught how behave properly, they have watched as those who came before them abused their birthrights, and they are understandably upset and desperate. Although their negative feelings are justified -- they have been abused and mistreated by those who had a responsibility to look after and help them -- the people who will soon be getting power and influence through attrition also don’t know how to make things run or how to be judicious.

            We are looking at a derailed train which hasn’t derailed yet. Rush has died, and along with him the convenient, comforting lies that white and middle class boomers have told themselves and their kids and grandkids are also dying. The old guard is disappearing, and the old guard neglected their responsibilities, they squandered their opportunities, and they spent the wealth that should have invested and handed down to what will soon be the new guard. The new guard is going to be abusive, malevolent, and malicious, and why shouldn’t they be? They were raised with lies and abuses which robbed them of any healthy or happy future. Race relations and income inequality have only gotten worse. There is no happy humanistic future that anybody who is paying attention believes in. The only people who believe in turning the other cheek are old people, the only people who never had to turn their other cheek. With Rush dies old America and the 1950s era white picket fence advertisements used to sell grills.

Cyclical Iterative Evolution

    Spengler gets a lot of acclaim and interest for the manner in which lays out that peoples as a whole and their cultures are essentially their own sort of organism which evolve over time and have different stages in their life. While he was onto something with regards to groups being parts of a whole organism rather than the current western understanding/religion of individualism, he is a bit short-sighted and too linear in his thinking. This is not surprising, as he was German and German’s have a historical and biological tendency towards hyperfocus and autistic linearity in how they construct cause and effect. Even though it is not surprising and I do not really hold it against him as he was quite prescient and made a lot of good points, I must try to adjust his theory if not overhaul it entirely. The linear (as well as separation between people groups) manner in which Spengler approached lifecycles of civilizations is incorrect, the manner in which lifecycles of civilizations operate operates across time in a non-linear and rather stuttered, cyclical manner.

            There are various stages, as the saying “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” states, in the lifecycle of a group of people or civilization (or even more accurately macro humanity and life itself.) With that acknowledged, the process is more like the raking of a lock than a linear equation. By the raking of a lock, I mean that each stage of a civilization or group of people’s lifecycle is its own organism that is appearing and disappearing and evolving in each iteration. Through each cycle, the particular organism present at that particular point in time is slightly evolved in a manner that is different than it was prior, as the environmental pressures involved (technology, resource distribution and magnitude, methods of resource transfer, structures built and decayed) are different than the last time that particular organism appeared.

The following may better illustrate what I mean:

Iteration 1		A1	B1	C1	D1	E1	F1	G1
Iteration 2	A2		B2	C2	D2	E2	F2	G2
Iteration 3	A3		B3	C3	D3	E3	F3	G3
Iteration 4	A4		B4	C4	D4	E4	F4	G4
Iteration 5	A5		B5	C5	D5	E5	F5	G5

(A-G are different defined times/periods in the cycle, but they are their own independent organism in the cycle of the whole which disappear and reappear in mutated/evolved forms as the cycle loops through iterations.)

As stated/charted above, as each iteration gets looped through, each particular organism (which people think of as times of prosperity, strength, hardship, decadence, etc.) is mutated or changed in its structure. Eventually, one of the organisms A-G (A-G is just a demonstration of the structure, there may be more or less defined organisms) is mutated or evolved enough in its context that it breaks off from the cycle and begins its own cycle with different organisms which have different character traits than the prior cyclical system. This can be best thought of in the biological sense as some membrane being punctured by a breakaway organism.

The aforementioned raking a lock analogy now is clearer, as the process is essentially a lock being jammed with some tool back and forth until one of the tumblers inside the lock is freed from the locked position. The analogy ends there however, as the raking or cyclical process ends there and the lock does not continue to be raked until all the tumblers are in the unlocked position.

This cyclical iterative evolutionary process which I have described is why the parallels between attributes in past eras such as the Weimar Republic and now are not applicable in the manner in which people who bring them up suggest. While it is true that hedonistic and nihilistic excess are now appearing in a very similar manner as they did in the Weimar Era, the environmental pressures and economic forces involved exist in a very different context and thus the results will be quite different. Wealth and resources have been abstracted, the psychic has been severed from its umbilical cord which previously connected from the physical and now the psychic economy has become dominant over the physical economy in a manner which has shifted dominance from masculine/strength to feminine/agility traits. All of these things mean that the manner in which this new period we are entering will be different and have a different outcome than prior iterations of the same organism or period.

The context in which Spengler operates does not properly integrate systems, entropy (or lack thereof) and derivatives of forces involved in systems, as such it is incorrect. Cyclical iterative evolution operates in a context which understands that environmental pressures and resources are also evolving cyclically in tandem with the organisms that appear, disappear, and reappear in a modified and more evolved state over iterations. Because we think of time as a purely linear thing, it is hard to wrap your head around a sort of stuttering, iterative, organism, but this is the correct view of how things function. This can be observed in a very localized context if you research polymorphic organisms and polymorphic ecosystems, and it applies to societies, civilizations, and humanity as a whole.