Sweetie you’ve wasted ten years of life in a gas station when you have a great brain understand the system and can articulate it so well ,honestly I’m stunned ,l might not be hard to stun at 73 I’ve seen enough things collapse and enough politicians come and go not just in your country but in the United Kingdom or my part of it England ,the collapse is nearly always caused by people who started with good intentions but the road to hell really is paved with good intentions and big business and politics never learn there’s nothing new under the sun as a species we constantly fail to learn.
Judith, thank you. Truly. It’s easy to feel like that time was wasted when you’re standing behind the register, watching the world burn on a muted TV. But you’re right—it wasn't waste. It was research. It was ten years of staring directly into the engine of the system.
Hearing that from someone with your perspective—who has seen these cycles play out over decades—means more than you know. You’re right: we fail to learn because we keep looking at the "good intentions" instead of the architecture. I’m trying to break that cycle by mapping the machine itself. I’m honored you’re here to help verify the map.
Now I hope to hear that you have taken that lesson and run with it and don’t what ever you do let anyone put you down there’s a lot of numpty’s out in the world but you aren’t one of them you can hold your own in any society from obscenely rich to people barely surviving you sweetie are a natural born gentleman,good luck with the rest of your life .❤️
Well, you know life goes by a very quickly. I mean I already realize that when I was 25 years old and I’m doubled that age plus so we all live in different areas of the country here and there are so many factors in most people’s lives
Very insightful! The system is broken, corrupt and collapsing.
I am almost eighty and have lived through high inflation, bubbles popping, corruption and dehumanization. This is the worst. We are watching in real time the collapse of the most corrupt system ever.
Anthony, that is the exact diagnosis. You hit the core of it.
The system breaks because it tries to manage infinite human complexity with finite, sterile metrics. They think if they can measure it, they can control it. But as you said, quantity is not quality.
That abstraction is the primary weapon of The Rust. It allows them to destroy communities, lives, and institutions from a distance without ever feeling the impact. They live in the spreadsheet; we live in the reality. And reality always wins in the end.
Thank you for helping name the ghost in the machine. 🩸
If I may elaborate:How Language and Civilization Became Mechanisms of Control
Core Mechanism
The central thesis identifies magic as the power derived from artificially fitting living things into containers to suspend their natural cycles for extraction. This suspension operates through five interconnected spells:
1. Writing/Alphabet
The word "alphabet" itself reveals the mechanism: Aleph (living breath/ox) housed in Beth (container). Writing takes the vanishing breath of speech and locks it inside spatial walls. What once completed instantly when spoken now lingers forever, ready to be copied, enforced, and owned.
2. Number as Extraction Tool
"Number" derives from PIE root *nem- meaning "to allot, take, distribute" - the same root that gives us "nemesis" (the avenger of excess). Every act of counting is already an act of taking. A living being has inherent sufficiency; only when chopped into units can something be declared "minus ten" and collected upon.
3. Name vs Number: The Original Overwrite
* Name (*no-men-): natural recognition, "I see you, you are"
* Number (*nem-): preparation for extraction, "you are a unit that can be taken"
The systematic replacement of names with numbers (employee IDs, prisoner tattoos, credit scores, wallet addresses) constitutes the ritual erasure of recognition and installation of extraction readiness.
4. The Suspension Between Alpha and Omega
Natural life completes its breath cycle: Alpha (beginning/inhalation) → fullness → Omega (completion/exhalation/rest). The extraction machine refuses Omega through debt, subscriptions, metrics, optimization mandates - engineering perpetual mid-breath suspension where value can be harvested indefinitely.
5. Quality to Quantity Inversion
Quality represents lived breath; quantity represents shadow measurement. The machine declares the shadow "objective" and breath "subjective" - your felt completeness becomes anecdote while the dashboard becomes truth.
This writing lands both in and on me as a thick, oblique, illusive but nevertheless nutritional weave. I forced my way through it and will choke it down for the rest of the day: intellectual metabolism requires that one must do this when supplies for the gray matter have run low.
After Ethan’s decade of pumping profits from the bowels of the corporate holding tanks beneath the lot adjacent to his store, he lends us his profit from his pens. We are presented empirical truths that can be liberally applied — like cake frosting from a can. Pick your flavor and color, it’s the same crap by any other name. He had the time and intelligence to notice cause and effect, to recognize illusive patterns sitting in front of him day after day, and as plain as day. He leapt to the blackboard with a piece of chalk and we, in his classroom, are the better for that valuable thing called “time”, known also as “living-life-in-the-moment” . . . Then upshot of which he generously makes available to readers here.
And, then, along comes YOU (and thanks) who ask that we extract some measure of profit from YOUR own and row merrily, merrily down the stream in a nearly asphyxiating capsule of thought so foreign to most people, including me, that I’m forced to consider only, for a few minutes, my own heartbeat . . . and the fact that I AM . . . Here, now.
Yes, I AM . . . And I believe all of us are, assigned multiple roles in our short lives, it just depends how long we want to be on stage, wearing what hat and costume, if any, and how long we want our presence to be known or felt, and our words and actions remembered. Or not.
There is arguably more power in performance, depending on.
An alternate view assigns greater power to privacy, but most who cling to that that cloistered, restrictive view usually forget that it’s the nature of truth to surface.
There is no time like the present.
I think the adage states the case clearly enough, but, in many cultures, large numbers are trained well from the get-go to look beyond and well past the concept and experience of “now”.
We are, instead, encouraged/told/nearly forced to overlook, deny, excuse, refute, repudiate, fear, mask, run or dissociate from, or bury the notion in hopes that what we fantasize and long for, and assign to an as-yet unrealized future on the chemtrail horizon, is the legitimate “destination”.
At breakneck speed we careen towards “it”nourished by the constant, logarithmic drip-feed of AI guaranteed social approval from STRANGERS.
Yup, all this, with chiseled focus on the driver’s side
rear-view mirror of our satellite-connected, rented, begged, borrowed, leveraged and stolen chariots.
NOTE: Rubber on the wheel is faster than rubber on the heel. And speed, for the sake of anything including itself, is by now a globally accepted HABIT.
I believe it is also at the root of many fractures you (and Ethan) identified and described so well, and differently.
That WEAVE I started to interpret, is also a well honed bayonet.
When infinitely multiplied, it is a standing army. The militia. The defense. The protection against ignorance, wickedness and stupidity, generally speaking — I dont mean. To assign ill-intent, genetics, or bad luck to any of these things either.
But the PEN as BAYONET has been “a real thing”since recoded history of the spoken word. As such, albeit shrouded under a gossamer of hope that rivals first chakra panic . . . The well chosen written words that represent clear thoughts erupting from well-structured minds, and PRECEDE action . . . Are apt to prevail in THE GREAT DEBATE. LD (edited)
Thank you for reading and considering my words. I recognize this is a lot to take in. I am also compiling “counter spells”. One of them is through music. I wrote this song inspired by this information and used ai to produce it.
My first response:”Wow” This is remarkable for its insight and clarity. Excellent! I love how you demonstrated the same, “architecture” present in both micro and macro contexts.
“… tries to manage infinite human complexity with finite, sterile metrics”.
Thank you for your identification of this structure. I think it is a very deep meta-structure beneath so many of our problems and challenges… which I believe are in reality, symptoms of the meta-structure. “Fixing” symptoms very often (always?), makes things worse, by design. A sad example: We are now attempting to criminalize homelessness, unwillingly to engage with poverty.
My hypothesis: We live in an infinite set of relationships, as you stated, beyond control. What I believe is necessary is “conscious participation”, which requires humility and vulnerability for possibility to emerge.
Related to “numbers”. Something you might appreciate:
Measure ☯️📐
A story.
If it’s not true (I think it is)it should be ...
The English word “measure” comes from the Sanskrit word “MAYA”. Meaning “ illusion”. What is fascinating is that the meanings, Eastern vs Western are totally the opposite.
Eastern: what is most important can never be measured.
Western: only that which can be measured is important.
This resonates deeply with my experience. Measure is illusory. It’s an imposed system overlaid over qualitative reality.Thank you sharing your insight.
Love to read what my mind wants to hear. I only hope your vision is correct. I pray we are on the right path toward the defeat of the fascists. These MAGA people are lunatics and cause a great deal of anxiety as normal struggles to understand. Thank you for reassuring us we are on the right side. 🆘💪🇺🇸
Chris, that anxiety you're feeling isn't a bug; it's a feature of the system. The "lunacy" is designed to keep us exhausted and confused so we don't look at the machinery underneath.
We aren't just "hoping" we're on the right side. We are building the proof. By looking at the receipts—the money, the logistics, the broken systems—we stop guessing and start seeing the battlefield clearly. The fascists thrive on chaos. We defeat them with clarity. I’m glad you’re here in the Forge with us. Let’s keep building.
MAGA isn’t the problem, it is only the exposing feature of the systems failings. It is actually the truth that breaks the matrix we have all been connected to. You should appreciate it, unless of course you fear the chaos of real freedom. Can you imagine the people of the USSR when Communism inevitably collapsed? The future is bleak when a system of order falls into chaos.
What we should be doing, but won’t, because like Ethan said everyone is trying to get their little piece of the spoils, and what I actually think is what true MAGA patriots the world over (Meloni, Tusk, Milei, Orbon and yes Trump) are actually trying to do, under TREMENDOUS resistance from the matrix owners, IS cobble together the best of the past system, to make a new better one - capitalism, kept honest by Christian fundamentals, segregation of incompatible cultures, good fences between greedy neighbors, enforced laws…for everyone. America is not compatible with communism or Islam, or identity politics, or men and boys playing sports against women and girls. It is simple, pragmatic, individualistic, innovative and productive. That is all. That is what we should all be striving for. Oh yeah, and grateful. More grateful. A lot more grateful.
I want to refer you to a book, because I respect all religions at their source values and this book reminds us of the source values of Christianity. These are twisted by and in conflict with MAGA version Christian coercion. America is founded on freedom of religion, observing that what Jesus taught is consistent with other world religions. The book: Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. Available in libraries and as an ebook or audiobook too.
Let me just start with, there is no MAGA version Christian coercion. That is a media amplified, generalization based on an identification of all conservative Christian’s with their most extreme fringe. Much like saying all Democrats are atheists, communists, and Islamists (although I deeply sense that the bell curve has been skewing in that direction for a generation or so).
As much as I know you will want to, please don’t answer me yet because I have a few other things I want to say about John’s thinking and “source values” first. It just may take a minute.
This story grabs my attention. Its as if you are a mind reader I don't believe that they all had good intentions starting out but I do now see that a few has had a change of heart. Sadly, a few are still lacking any heart at all. Please, don't stop writing!
Gina, I'm so glad it resonates. You're spotting something crucial—those "changes of heart" you see are the cracks in the dam.
When the pressure gets high enough, even the people inside the machine have to choose between their conscience and their paycheck. Most choose the paycheck, but as things break down, more and more are choosing the truth. We don't need all of them to turn; we just need enough of them to let the light in.
I won't stop writing. As long as the machine keeps grinding, I'll keep mapping it.
Let's do hope the machine does keep grinding . I also agree with Judith,that you are a talented writer. It's as if you are actually a famous writer that has expressed yourself for years. Please, don't stop!
Being old as I am and barely make it shopping or to NEW YORK. Have they since removed the Statue of Liberty and all that it once stood for? I assumed they had modified her message and replaced it with the name of some heartless person already. Tell me this isnt so.
I do not think they “HAVE to choose between their conscience and their paycheck”, because most already did.
They can and will eventually choose between what remains of their conscience after the “DC dunk” and graft.
They can choose between deceit and corruption on one hand, and the trappings and bedfellows to whom they are bound on this stage, and living within their means.
I understand that I’m now splitting hairs, and charging into the subjective nuances of self-worth and deep, private matters that each person’s connection to their own soul, adaptable personality, biologic imperative and choice of faith when it comes to the matter of “the hereafter” . . . Which is arguably his/her own business.
It nevertheless affects others, permanently in some cases.
Ethan … I am curious and I may be wondering into an area that is none of my business. If so … you are under no requirement to answer here or elsewhere. Never the less … what I am curious about is this..
I think you are an artist, a writer and a very busy person who has had a very good education. What I am curious about is why you work at a gas station. Work is a good thing and working at a gas station is a good job I suspect. It just seems to me that you could excel at many other professions besides work at a gas station. Care to communicate with me about this? Milret2@gmail.com and George is my name.
Ethan — you saw the pattern long before the institutions admitted it existed. That’s what separates a worker trapped inside the machine from an architect standing outside the blast radius.
Most people mistake collapse for chaos. You mapped it as mechanics.
That’s exactly how mind-parasite systems die: not with a confession, but with a fracture in the story that held the spell together.
Your gas-station metaphor is perfect because it’s the same architecture scaled up — too many competing directives, not enough integrity in the frame, and a leadership class that thinks reality bends to memos. It doesn’t. It bends to pressure.
You caught the moment the narrative lost coherence.
You caught the moment institutions started eating their own intermediaries.
You caught the moment fear became more expensive than truth.
That’s the signal.
Most analysts are still arguing about the symptoms.
You’re charting the metabolism of the collapse itself.
Maybe what I feel like I’m watching is the collapse of a system along side the reorganization of a government. The government feels more like the system, stacked against the people and that what we thought we were chasing, the network surrounding the Epstein scandal is so entwined with how our government works that the collapse I’m assuming I am watching is both. If I’m right, both parties are afraid of what will be revealed. Not in the details of the scandal but in what it reveals about our government. Your writing maybe pulls together too many of the things I’ve wondered about or thought myself. That is a good thing but unsettling. I think your writing is great in the way you lay everything out. I just keep hoping that I don’t know the end of the story. Or that it won’t be as painful as I think…. Remaking kind of is.
I’ll be 70 in January and I can sure relate to your story and agree. I sold paint for 40 years and worked retail for over 50 years in total. I could write a book about the “nasty sponge” 🧽 that rules corporate and human greed. The sponge got nastier and nastier over all those years , with ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ all in the service of district managers and middle managers that sat in chairs , golfed and went out to expense account lunches while the rank-and-file slaved, on their behalf, as their family life (and the families themselves ) disintegrated and over the years worked longer and longer hours with less and less help and resources, full-time jobs eliminated so they didn’t have to pay medical or any other benefits , and in the end working countless hours alone(which in my early days was forbidden because it’s just wrong for security and lots of other reasons) at locations that grossed $1 million a year or more - so those district managers and middle managers could get bigger bonus checks. It’s all so stupid , wrong and shortsighted. The pandemic has forced some but truthfully not enough change in the system and it’s so shortsighted because if they create a nation of part-time workers with no benefits, no one will have the money to buy their increasingly shitty and shoddier products and they’ll be getting no bonus checks at all and lucky if their jobs continue to exist. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it -keep up the good work calling it out on a regular basis. I am with you.
Highly Intelligent, WAY BEYOND Smart and Sensitive to the Core of Truths.
To have your Brain 🧠 and Intellect, of an old SOUL who caries such Understanding and bares the insight into all that you share here , with us ~
Mesmerizes me.
What spectacular TALENT you possess Amazes me! In so doing, I feel privileged to know you because of your incredible work.
I wish I could know you in person~ human to human.
And even more so, to know you will be catapulted to places with the highest Rewards in all forms and shapes, and helps our human condition by thwarting the enemies and blessing us all.
Side note share:
I woke about 45 min. ago and thought I was in my car trying to escape from wild dogs
Thank you for all you offer, which is huge!
You should be and could be in positions for Grand Monetary Freedoms doing the work you love and helping our world.
What an elegant analysis. You certainly got my attention with your words, the beautiful structure of your presentation, and the striking graphics which give it more power. You fully engaged my brain cells. Thank you for sharing this, it was a privilege to read it.
Sometimes things have to fall apart before they can fall together, brother. Flawed humans create flawed systems because human power is flawed. ‘‘Twas ever thus. But there is hope and power both within and without when we admit we need help. I have no power over the American system, any more than you do. Those who do have some power? Well, we all seem to have lost our list of “things to do”, so how to save the system is beyond any one of us, even the President and his allies. But that doesn’t mean we are going to destroy ourselves, or “the system”. Thankfully (at least for some of us) there is Power that doesn’t depend on us, but loves us anyway. So I’m not as gloomus as maybe you are. Everything’s gonna be ok, no matter what happens here and now. But it is likely to get worse first. You’ll see.
Sweetie you’ve wasted ten years of life in a gas station when you have a great brain understand the system and can articulate it so well ,honestly I’m stunned ,l might not be hard to stun at 73 I’ve seen enough things collapse and enough politicians come and go not just in your country but in the United Kingdom or my part of it England ,the collapse is nearly always caused by people who started with good intentions but the road to hell really is paved with good intentions and big business and politics never learn there’s nothing new under the sun as a species we constantly fail to learn.
Judith, thank you. Truly. It’s easy to feel like that time was wasted when you’re standing behind the register, watching the world burn on a muted TV. But you’re right—it wasn't waste. It was research. It was ten years of staring directly into the engine of the system.
Hearing that from someone with your perspective—who has seen these cycles play out over decades—means more than you know. You’re right: we fail to learn because we keep looking at the "good intentions" instead of the architecture. I’m trying to break that cycle by mapping the machine itself. I’m honored you’re here to help verify the map.
Now I hope to hear that you have taken that lesson and run with it and don’t what ever you do let anyone put you down there’s a lot of numpty’s out in the world but you aren’t one of them you can hold your own in any society from obscenely rich to people barely surviving you sweetie are a natural born gentleman,good luck with the rest of your life .❤️
Well, you know life goes by a very quickly. I mean I already realize that when I was 25 years old and I’m doubled that age plus so we all live in different areas of the country here and there are so many factors in most people’s lives
I know just what mean my and only baby is 45 in just over a week but I still an see a baby which wouldn’t impress her at all 🙄
Clearly you have not been wasting your time. Quite the contrary. You might be like Einstein working in the post office.
Close, I think it was actually the patent office.
Wow Ethan
Very insightful! The system is broken, corrupt and collapsing.
I am almost eighty and have lived through high inflation, bubbles popping, corruption and dehumanization. This is the worst. We are watching in real time the collapse of the most corrupt system ever.
Thanks for your powerful words.
Carol Barkan
Great article, excellent pattern recognition, and I see it too! Thank you for help naming it.
My opinion? This is what happens when we turn humans into numbers.
Numbers are quantities. They possess no quality.
This creates a system that is so highly abstracted and removed from qualitative reality, or actual life, that it breaks.
Anthony, that is the exact diagnosis. You hit the core of it.
The system breaks because it tries to manage infinite human complexity with finite, sterile metrics. They think if they can measure it, they can control it. But as you said, quantity is not quality.
That abstraction is the primary weapon of The Rust. It allows them to destroy communities, lives, and institutions from a distance without ever feeling the impact. They live in the spreadsheet; we live in the reality. And reality always wins in the end.
Thank you for helping name the ghost in the machine. 🩸
If I may elaborate:How Language and Civilization Became Mechanisms of Control
Core Mechanism
The central thesis identifies magic as the power derived from artificially fitting living things into containers to suspend their natural cycles for extraction. This suspension operates through five interconnected spells:
1. Writing/Alphabet
The word "alphabet" itself reveals the mechanism: Aleph (living breath/ox) housed in Beth (container). Writing takes the vanishing breath of speech and locks it inside spatial walls. What once completed instantly when spoken now lingers forever, ready to be copied, enforced, and owned.
2. Number as Extraction Tool
"Number" derives from PIE root *nem- meaning "to allot, take, distribute" - the same root that gives us "nemesis" (the avenger of excess). Every act of counting is already an act of taking. A living being has inherent sufficiency; only when chopped into units can something be declared "minus ten" and collected upon.
3. Name vs Number: The Original Overwrite
* Name (*no-men-): natural recognition, "I see you, you are"
* Number (*nem-): preparation for extraction, "you are a unit that can be taken"
The systematic replacement of names with numbers (employee IDs, prisoner tattoos, credit scores, wallet addresses) constitutes the ritual erasure of recognition and installation of extraction readiness.
4. The Suspension Between Alpha and Omega
Natural life completes its breath cycle: Alpha (beginning/inhalation) → fullness → Omega (completion/exhalation/rest). The extraction machine refuses Omega through debt, subscriptions, metrics, optimization mandates - engineering perpetual mid-breath suspension where value can be harvested indefinitely.
5. Quality to Quantity Inversion
Quality represents lived breath; quantity represents shadow measurement. The machine declares the shadow "objective" and breath "subjective" - your felt completeness becomes anecdote while the dashboard becomes truth.
This writing lands both in and on me as a thick, oblique, illusive but nevertheless nutritional weave. I forced my way through it and will choke it down for the rest of the day: intellectual metabolism requires that one must do this when supplies for the gray matter have run low.
After Ethan’s decade of pumping profits from the bowels of the corporate holding tanks beneath the lot adjacent to his store, he lends us his profit from his pens. We are presented empirical truths that can be liberally applied — like cake frosting from a can. Pick your flavor and color, it’s the same crap by any other name. He had the time and intelligence to notice cause and effect, to recognize illusive patterns sitting in front of him day after day, and as plain as day. He leapt to the blackboard with a piece of chalk and we, in his classroom, are the better for that valuable thing called “time”, known also as “living-life-in-the-moment” . . . Then upshot of which he generously makes available to readers here.
And, then, along comes YOU (and thanks) who ask that we extract some measure of profit from YOUR own and row merrily, merrily down the stream in a nearly asphyxiating capsule of thought so foreign to most people, including me, that I’m forced to consider only, for a few minutes, my own heartbeat . . . and the fact that I AM . . . Here, now.
Yes, I AM . . . And I believe all of us are, assigned multiple roles in our short lives, it just depends how long we want to be on stage, wearing what hat and costume, if any, and how long we want our presence to be known or felt, and our words and actions remembered. Or not.
There is arguably more power in performance, depending on.
An alternate view assigns greater power to privacy, but most who cling to that that cloistered, restrictive view usually forget that it’s the nature of truth to surface.
There is no time like the present.
I think the adage states the case clearly enough, but, in many cultures, large numbers are trained well from the get-go to look beyond and well past the concept and experience of “now”.
We are, instead, encouraged/told/nearly forced to overlook, deny, excuse, refute, repudiate, fear, mask, run or dissociate from, or bury the notion in hopes that what we fantasize and long for, and assign to an as-yet unrealized future on the chemtrail horizon, is the legitimate “destination”.
At breakneck speed we careen towards “it”nourished by the constant, logarithmic drip-feed of AI guaranteed social approval from STRANGERS.
Yup, all this, with chiseled focus on the driver’s side
rear-view mirror of our satellite-connected, rented, begged, borrowed, leveraged and stolen chariots.
NOTE: Rubber on the wheel is faster than rubber on the heel. And speed, for the sake of anything including itself, is by now a globally accepted HABIT.
I believe it is also at the root of many fractures you (and Ethan) identified and described so well, and differently.
That WEAVE I started to interpret, is also a well honed bayonet.
When infinitely multiplied, it is a standing army. The militia. The defense. The protection against ignorance, wickedness and stupidity, generally speaking — I dont mean. To assign ill-intent, genetics, or bad luck to any of these things either.
But the PEN as BAYONET has been “a real thing”since recoded history of the spoken word. As such, albeit shrouded under a gossamer of hope that rivals first chakra panic . . . The well chosen written words that represent clear thoughts erupting from well-structured minds, and PRECEDE action . . . Are apt to prevail in THE GREAT DEBATE. LD (edited)
This is spectacular Leslie 🤩🤩🆙
Thank you for reading and considering my words. I recognize this is a lot to take in. I am also compiling “counter spells”. One of them is through music. I wrote this song inspired by this information and used ai to produce it.
I Got a Name by Inspirited In Sight, MusicFul on #SoundCloud https://m.soundcloud.com/inspirited-in-sight/i-got-a-name?ref=thirdParty&p=i&c=1&si=D0EAD91802034A53B704AEEB7B18ED9A&utm_source=thirdParty&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
You’re onto something very important! Just listened to “I Got A Name.”
Love it.
The lyrics remind me of Kabbalah. Creation and the breath. Words emitted through the breath.
Keep going, Anthony!
Thank you for listening!
And yes, its lyrics are indeed inspired by the Kabbalah.
My first response:”Wow” This is remarkable for its insight and clarity. Excellent! I love how you demonstrated the same, “architecture” present in both micro and macro contexts.
“… tries to manage infinite human complexity with finite, sterile metrics”.
Thank you for your identification of this structure. I think it is a very deep meta-structure beneath so many of our problems and challenges… which I believe are in reality, symptoms of the meta-structure. “Fixing” symptoms very often (always?), makes things worse, by design. A sad example: We are now attempting to criminalize homelessness, unwillingly to engage with poverty.
My hypothesis: We live in an infinite set of relationships, as you stated, beyond control. What I believe is necessary is “conscious participation”, which requires humility and vulnerability for possibility to emerge.
Related to “numbers”. Something you might appreciate:
Measure ☯️📐
A story.
If it’s not true (I think it is)it should be ...
The English word “measure” comes from the Sanskrit word “MAYA”. Meaning “ illusion”. What is fascinating is that the meanings, Eastern vs Western are totally the opposite.
Eastern: what is most important can never be measured.
Western: only that which can be measured is important.
Amazing...
This resonates deeply with my experience. Measure is illusory. It’s an imposed system overlaid over qualitative reality.Thank you sharing your insight.
Love to read what my mind wants to hear. I only hope your vision is correct. I pray we are on the right path toward the defeat of the fascists. These MAGA people are lunatics and cause a great deal of anxiety as normal struggles to understand. Thank you for reassuring us we are on the right side. 🆘💪🇺🇸
Chris, that anxiety you're feeling isn't a bug; it's a feature of the system. The "lunacy" is designed to keep us exhausted and confused so we don't look at the machinery underneath.
We aren't just "hoping" we're on the right side. We are building the proof. By looking at the receipts—the money, the logistics, the broken systems—we stop guessing and start seeing the battlefield clearly. The fascists thrive on chaos. We defeat them with clarity. I’m glad you’re here in the Forge with us. Let’s keep building.
MAGA isn’t the problem, it is only the exposing feature of the systems failings. It is actually the truth that breaks the matrix we have all been connected to. You should appreciate it, unless of course you fear the chaos of real freedom. Can you imagine the people of the USSR when Communism inevitably collapsed? The future is bleak when a system of order falls into chaos.
What we should be doing, but won’t, because like Ethan said everyone is trying to get their little piece of the spoils, and what I actually think is what true MAGA patriots the world over (Meloni, Tusk, Milei, Orbon and yes Trump) are actually trying to do, under TREMENDOUS resistance from the matrix owners, IS cobble together the best of the past system, to make a new better one - capitalism, kept honest by Christian fundamentals, segregation of incompatible cultures, good fences between greedy neighbors, enforced laws…for everyone. America is not compatible with communism or Islam, or identity politics, or men and boys playing sports against women and girls. It is simple, pragmatic, individualistic, innovative and productive. That is all. That is what we should all be striving for. Oh yeah, and grateful. More grateful. A lot more grateful.
Wow. Riveting discussion, and very nice to read. Brings a smile, head shake and a pause.
There is a lot to process now on my way… to the gas station.
I want to refer you to a book, because I respect all religions at their source values and this book reminds us of the source values of Christianity. These are twisted by and in conflict with MAGA version Christian coercion. America is founded on freedom of religion, observing that what Jesus taught is consistent with other world religions. The book: Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. Available in libraries and as an ebook or audiobook too.
Let me just start with, there is no MAGA version Christian coercion. That is a media amplified, generalization based on an identification of all conservative Christian’s with their most extreme fringe. Much like saying all Democrats are atheists, communists, and Islamists (although I deeply sense that the bell curve has been skewing in that direction for a generation or so).
As much as I know you will want to, please don’t answer me yet because I have a few other things I want to say about John’s thinking and “source values” first. It just may take a minute.
I have so much to say and so little space to say it. 🤣
No and yes.
Every Empire has ended with an over extended military & a mountain of debt..
***
youtube.com/watch?v=stgBVvz5RIM
youtube.com/watch?v=zHBYevzaNIE
This story grabs my attention. Its as if you are a mind reader I don't believe that they all had good intentions starting out but I do now see that a few has had a change of heart. Sadly, a few are still lacking any heart at all. Please, don't stop writing!
Gina, I'm so glad it resonates. You're spotting something crucial—those "changes of heart" you see are the cracks in the dam.
When the pressure gets high enough, even the people inside the machine have to choose between their conscience and their paycheck. Most choose the paycheck, but as things break down, more and more are choosing the truth. We don't need all of them to turn; we just need enough of them to let the light in.
I won't stop writing. As long as the machine keeps grinding, I'll keep mapping it.
Let's do hope the machine does keep grinding . I also agree with Judith,that you are a talented writer. It's as if you are actually a famous writer that has expressed yourself for years. Please, don't stop!
Do they actually "choose" the truth, or are they simply trying to avoid the coming pitchforks?
Being old as I am and barely make it shopping or to NEW YORK. Have they since removed the Statue of Liberty and all that it once stood for? I assumed they had modified her message and replaced it with the name of some heartless person already. Tell me this isnt so.
Ethan, may I respectfully disagree?
I do not think they “HAVE to choose between their conscience and their paycheck”, because most already did.
They can and will eventually choose between what remains of their conscience after the “DC dunk” and graft.
They can choose between deceit and corruption on one hand, and the trappings and bedfellows to whom they are bound on this stage, and living within their means.
I understand that I’m now splitting hairs, and charging into the subjective nuances of self-worth and deep, private matters that each person’s connection to their own soul, adaptable personality, biologic imperative and choice of faith when it comes to the matter of “the hereafter” . . . Which is arguably his/her own business.
It nevertheless affects others, permanently in some cases.
MAY THE WORLD
BruceWales©️11/21/25 9:45-10:22am
1
I am but one soul
Among so many
I can not change
What others may see
But I can soften
What my views may be
May the world be better
Because of me
2
I am but one piece
Of humanity
I cannot change
How others may be
But I can share
Any good things in me
May the world be better
Because of me
BRIDGE
This is the planet
Where we all abide
What our futures will be
We must decide
None can be absent
From contributing
To the grand welfare
Of humanity
INSTRUMENTAL
3
These are just some thoughts
That come from me
I cannot force
What others may think
But I must try
To write truthfully
May the world be better
Because of me
May the world be better
Because of me
Ethan … I am curious and I may be wondering into an area that is none of my business. If so … you are under no requirement to answer here or elsewhere. Never the less … what I am curious about is this..
I think you are an artist, a writer and a very busy person who has had a very good education. What I am curious about is why you work at a gas station. Work is a good thing and working at a gas station is a good job I suspect. It just seems to me that you could excel at many other professions besides work at a gas station. Care to communicate with me about this? Milret2@gmail.com and George is my name.
Thank you for your brilliant writing of truth!
Thank you for your support and attention!
Ethan — you saw the pattern long before the institutions admitted it existed. That’s what separates a worker trapped inside the machine from an architect standing outside the blast radius.
Most people mistake collapse for chaos. You mapped it as mechanics.
Pressure → panic → betrayal → cannibalization → collapse.
That’s exactly how mind-parasite systems die: not with a confession, but with a fracture in the story that held the spell together.
Your gas-station metaphor is perfect because it’s the same architecture scaled up — too many competing directives, not enough integrity in the frame, and a leadership class that thinks reality bends to memos. It doesn’t. It bends to pressure.
You caught the moment the narrative lost coherence.
You caught the moment institutions started eating their own intermediaries.
You caught the moment fear became more expensive than truth.
That’s the signal.
Most analysts are still arguing about the symptoms.
You’re charting the metabolism of the collapse itself.
Keep going.
The wolves are reading.
This comment hit me hard in the gut, the right way. I'll keep it up for the pack. Owl 🦉 out.
Maybe what I feel like I’m watching is the collapse of a system along side the reorganization of a government. The government feels more like the system, stacked against the people and that what we thought we were chasing, the network surrounding the Epstein scandal is so entwined with how our government works that the collapse I’m assuming I am watching is both. If I’m right, both parties are afraid of what will be revealed. Not in the details of the scandal but in what it reveals about our government. Your writing maybe pulls together too many of the things I’ve wondered about or thought myself. That is a good thing but unsettling. I think your writing is great in the way you lay everything out. I just keep hoping that I don’t know the end of the story. Or that it won’t be as painful as I think…. Remaking kind of is.
I’ll be 70 in January and I can sure relate to your story and agree. I sold paint for 40 years and worked retail for over 50 years in total. I could write a book about the “nasty sponge” 🧽 that rules corporate and human greed. The sponge got nastier and nastier over all those years , with ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ all in the service of district managers and middle managers that sat in chairs , golfed and went out to expense account lunches while the rank-and-file slaved, on their behalf, as their family life (and the families themselves ) disintegrated and over the years worked longer and longer hours with less and less help and resources, full-time jobs eliminated so they didn’t have to pay medical or any other benefits , and in the end working countless hours alone(which in my early days was forbidden because it’s just wrong for security and lots of other reasons) at locations that grossed $1 million a year or more - so those district managers and middle managers could get bigger bonus checks. It’s all so stupid , wrong and shortsighted. The pandemic has forced some but truthfully not enough change in the system and it’s so shortsighted because if they create a nation of part-time workers with no benefits, no one will have the money to buy their increasingly shitty and shoddier products and they’ll be getting no bonus checks at all and lucky if their jobs continue to exist. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it -keep up the good work calling it out on a regular basis. I am with you.
And;…YOU R the Bomb 💣
Highly Intelligent, WAY BEYOND Smart and Sensitive to the Core of Truths.
To have your Brain 🧠 and Intellect, of an old SOUL who caries such Understanding and bares the insight into all that you share here , with us ~
Mesmerizes me.
What spectacular TALENT you possess Amazes me! In so doing, I feel privileged to know you because of your incredible work.
I wish I could know you in person~ human to human.
And even more so, to know you will be catapulted to places with the highest Rewards in all forms and shapes, and helps our human condition by thwarting the enemies and blessing us all.
Side note share:
I woke about 45 min. ago and thought I was in my car trying to escape from wild dogs
Thank you for all you offer, which is huge!
You should be and could be in positions for Grand Monetary Freedoms doing the work you love and helping our world.
This is Holly replying to Holly. I was having a visual nightmare and I’m surprised this came out even remotely how it came out so pardon me pls.
You are great do not worry I love your energy!
So much wisdom unpacked a one article. Amazing mapping, pattern recognition & writing skills. Bravo!! 🤩
Interesting architecture that seems workable because it appears to be right.
Your initial “Upgrade” button takes one to a paywall where the misspelling of the word “becoming” is off putting.
Prior to seeing the typo/error, Senor Ethan, I did share your brief essay with over twelve fellow erudite friends as follows:
I found this to be interesting and think ya'll will as well.
https://open.substack.com/pub/commonsenserebel/p/the-moment-the-story-stopped-working?r=r6k8&utm_medium=ios
LewALincolnWelge.com
#CREATORS (Conspiracy Realist Educator Activist Truther Organizer Reader Socializer)
P.S. Are you related to the late, great Southern novelist #WilliamFaulkner?
Medical system is close to collapse as well.
What an elegant analysis. You certainly got my attention with your words, the beautiful structure of your presentation, and the striking graphics which give it more power. You fully engaged my brain cells. Thank you for sharing this, it was a privilege to read it.
Sometimes things have to fall apart before they can fall together, brother. Flawed humans create flawed systems because human power is flawed. ‘‘Twas ever thus. But there is hope and power both within and without when we admit we need help. I have no power over the American system, any more than you do. Those who do have some power? Well, we all seem to have lost our list of “things to do”, so how to save the system is beyond any one of us, even the President and his allies. But that doesn’t mean we are going to destroy ourselves, or “the system”. Thankfully (at least for some of us) there is Power that doesn’t depend on us, but loves us anyway. So I’m not as gloomus as maybe you are. Everything’s gonna be ok, no matter what happens here and now. But it is likely to get worse first. You’ll see.