The term “utopia” comes from ancient Greek. It literally means “no place,” but it's also a pun on “eutopia,” meaning “good place.” In other words, utopia is a good place that doesn't exist. It’s an ideal like Platonic solids. EUtopias DO exist. EUtopias are realistic and attainable. A well maintained home with an attractively landscaped yard is one example of a EUtopia.
Wow! I had to look that up for myself, and I'm an etymology freak. Does Europe then derive from good something?
I think for my purposes, utopia is still fitting because it is designing an imaginary place, that can't exist without the system change of taking back money creation backed by the houses at the local level. But the design can't wait until it's possible--it would be like not designing a house until you're ready to build. So it has to be pragmatically worked out, and modeled, and argued--definitely argued.
Thanks for reading and adding this tasty etymology tidbit, Danway!
Thank you, Philip! I'm writing one now that responds to Mathew Crawford called Bitcoin vs. the Caret. I'd say that 'a new paradigm that values everyone' is the major difference between the two. Bitcoin, if I understand it, is a way for people with enough money to risk to preserve or increase its value. The caret is a system that includes everyone equally. Of course, the caret isn't available without system change, whereas Bitcoin is available now. So that's another difference ;-)
Yes, agree, Philip. Tereza is clearly running ahead of most. I imagine we'll be considering new community based money systems before too long. Blueprints like hers, will have enormous value. Not least of which is the need to clean up the way we think (or really, tend not to think) about money.
hola, teraza. i laughed out loud at johan galtung's comment about economists! yes, talking with them is about as hard as talking to progressive liberal humanists and militant vegans. as stated before, when i got my economics degree i was so shocked and appalled at what i was being taught that i spent the next 7 years researching why it was a horrific world-wide religion and false in its premises and functioning.
your piece is a fine vision and pragmatic.
have you dipped into james lindsay at all? if you haven't you may find him worth while to attend as he gives a really deep concrete understanding of the ideological basis of much of it is actually a kind of quasi-hidden marxism (maoism) that has become imbedded in our economic and cultural structures. his information and conclusions provide a lexicon that allows for dialogue and perhaps the possibility of persuasion to happen with improving our ability to listen to their words with their understanding of them, which is frequently different than 'our' non-marxist understanding of them. i've linked a short introduction to him and then a longer one if the first appeals to you. and if you don't know about the fabians, an important group — all uk labour leaders have been fabians, including the current one, starmer. lindsay talks about them too. i've linked the fabian section in the second video link to the time of it.
short: James Lindsay | Woke Culture HAS NOT Gone Too Far - 6/8 | Oxford Union
also lindsay talks about the fabians within the context of the marxist movement you discussed here and more. and he commented on shaw's open and active zeal for eugenics and their common intent with the marxists, although the fabians were critical of the means of the marxists, not their intention. lindsay also references to the really horrific public statements shaw makes in support of eugenics:
Very clever and entertaining 'debate' by James Lindsay. Although debate has to be in quotes since he argues his side as a parody to ridicule it. Since my hands were full, YT flipped to the next video of Tommy Nguyen arguing why woke culture HAS gone too far. I found him very well reasoned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBnHgRgUR2I.
The problem, I find, with arguing -isms is they're a melange of ideas, some where we might agree. But seeing it as a whole discredits any idea by its association with other ideas. I don't agree with need-based economic systems that take away the product of some people's labor to distribute it to others. I also don't agree with greed-based systems that allow bankers to be the default owners of all the land and issue credit against it, so we all work for them. But arguing Marxism against capitalism is never going to get to these points of agreement.
Thanks for adding your deep and rebellious knowledge from an education in the belly of the beast ;-) Glad I could make you laugh with the Galtung quote.
hola, tereza. yes 'debate' for sure in quotation marks. (he and peter borghesian submitted and got peer reviewed humanity papers that were accepted that were 100% fake. they did it to discredit the 'woke' humanities in the universities when they saw the woke invading their university with demands for passing failing students. doing those papers initiated his deep dive into the ideology that even connects to the oligarchs: today i learned that klaus schwab was a student of prominent marxist and the destructive dialectic that they espouse!)
i agree with you about 'the' problem with arguing -isms! and like you i think that need-based 'economics' is unnecessary, that its premise of scarcity that founds it, and that it is greed is the premise that drive is is ... i was going to say incorrect and yet something like an economy is actually functioning with it so... those foundational principles are unnecessarily hurtful and actually less than optimally functionally. 'greed is not good' and yet is actually a rationalising principle for economic mathematical modelling! now that is crazy.
so, lindsay's research isn't really the defense of the current economic model, at least not explicitly. although he may lean that way without having thought about it too much. his dig is into how and why marxism has slid into our culture with enough virulence that we can be cancelled for calling a man a man. how did that happen?
so he is doing a deep dive into the roots of that and inferring the psychological substrate that allowed it to flourish. i think this is valuable information as we go forward building the alternative because understanding the enemy well gives us a mechanism to deflect the attacks and with that perhaps do aikido and foil them into a deep enough cognitive dissonance to revise their paradigm.
i repeat: lindsay isn't arguing a defence of capitalism per se, especially not directly. he is looking at the roots of marxism, why it is popular and everywhere today, the danger of its language to create confusion, what that language is and the impact it is having in our society now and its implications going forward. and, for your purposes, (our purposes?), why it is going to be a challenge and impediment to your idea of how to rebuild the empire. their ideology and language have become a deep metastasised thought-cancer or mind-virus that is very dominant in our current culture. very well hidden with code language that is a serious threat because it has a powerful pull and is dominant in the university systems, including economics. again, it is the ideology that has been powerful enough to cancel people who called a man a man because he wore a dress. and to rationalise as humane the genital and chemical mutilation of children.
i anticipate that with that kind of knowledge we have a much better ability to go forward and avoid some of their traps in deconstructing the empire and rebuilding it without that being the scorched earth destruction process that is built into the marxist dialectic. it was interesting to learn that it is grounded in the gnostic idea of life as a prison, a god-given trap that can be escaped only by its destruction though a cyclic process.
as noted, i've argued that our current economics is a religion because it moralises that the undeserving are to die. the deep roots of marxist ideology is that everyone needs to die by necessity of the dialectic process of cyclic destruction as the required method of creating the utopian return to the garden of eden. it is one of the reasons that so many died with stalin and mao, etc. — death is an accepted part of the process and their presence is a serious threat to anyone not on the right side of history. does that sound at all familiar with what we are waking up to in the time of the convid?
anyway, that is my pitch to you tonight. now to get back to developing my yoga centre for recovery from trauma.
I saw the word Capitalism and was immediately triggered – here is what Mosely says (see source link in another of my comments):
35. What is the difference between Fascism and Capitalism, since both admit the system of private enterprise ?
Mosley: In brief definition, Capitalism is the system by which capital uses the Nation for its own purposes. Fascism is the system by which the Nation uses capital for its own purposes.
Edit: “arguing Marxism against capitalism”
But remember, Marx WROTE “Das Kapital” – see Moseley’s response.
Great definition. I talk about capitalism being a meaningless term unless you specify who owns the capital, which are the assets that back the money. Banker capitalism = bad. Community capitalism = good.
I always enjoy your ideas and how you articulate them. I wondered often if barter or scrip would develop in the post lunatic world and how it would work for me as a British Sign Language Interpreter, formerly facecto face, self employed freelance funded by Government money or companies fulfilling disability access obligations, now employed by a global language organisation, doing mainly health care via Video Remote Interpreting. My skill is essential for British Deaf people who could not afford to cover costs themselves. How would this work in our version of a Brave New World? P.S. There are startups trying to use AI to generate signed interpretation so I may be a redundant useless eater if it takes off....
Thank you for the compliment, Paul! I'm so pleased to find someone else who knows about scrip, which is exactly the foundation for my model in the way that Ben Franklin designed it for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As you know, there's a big difference between that and barter. The scrip was backed by land, which Franklin said couldn't be exported, unlike gold. Of course, our banking system found a way and now exports them in tranches.
My system is supplemental, and doesn't take anything away from existing gov't or corporate systems. So the short answer is that it wouldn't change your job at all. My model takes the power to issue money from bankers, but that's all. So money that's been entirely extracted is now available to use, not just as interest post-payment, but to issue as targeted credits in advance of debt payments.
So let's say that your commonwealth adopts my distribution model of ^100/ mo. in each of the areas of locally produced food, education, wellcare and home improvements. It seems like your skill would fall into both education and wellcare. People can use them for whatever they want in those categories, they just can't use them for rent or mortgage without earning them.
I would bet that in-person classes would be very popular. I'd take them! I've always wanted to learn sign language so I could dance with my hands ;-)
I have volunteered to interpret Mike Yeadon's Silver Bullet speech. Working on logistics while taking on prostate cancer on my own. Rejected Allopathic Oncology. The UK NHS will not deviate from "Standard of Care"!
Do you read Tonika's Visceral Adventures, Paul? She rejected allopathic treatment for breast cancer and got a clean bill of health one year to the day from her diagnosis. The doctors called her 'the control group' and she was hoping they'd take that seriously: https://visceraladventure.substack.com/p/i-cancer-can-can-denouement.
What made the scrip so powerful is that it was backed by the mortgages and collected in taxes, which were controlled by the local community. In my book, I trace alternative currencies and show how, when you take out the percentage for housing and taxes, $100 is reduced to pennies in circulation after four exchanges. So the 'multiplier effect' isn't a full accounting for leakage.
What a pleasant surprise! And what a delight!! I favour audio readings and this is a treasure. I am able to just pick up the book and follow along and highlight – and beautifully read ‘n all. (I have also only recently ‘read’ Chapter 9 on Libya.)
The passage I particularly highlighted was:
“What matters is that we have a way of talking about and thinking about concepts when the words to describe them have been corrupted and often turned into their opposites, not by accident.”
And …
“Get your hands in the dirt.”
I will pass on the Dance (that’s just introverted me), but I hope to share my experience with dirty hands on my substack in due course.
Oh good, we'll be able to experience spring vicariously, here where it's getting nippy!
I was pleased with that sentence too, Julius. It seems like a very long time ago that I wrote it, when I didn't know nearly as much about the intentional perversion of the words. And I feel, more and more, that the essential first step is learning how to think clearly and disagree productively. That seems to be where we keep getting stuck.
Oops, going backwards as I missed the beginning. For those of us that read the book, it’ll be a great treat to hear it read in your voice with your intonation. 🙌
I'm finding it fun to read too. It feels livelier getting to make my snarky comments out loud. The image of these stuck-up guys debating 'democracy' while the women and slaves coddle them makes me wonder how we ever took them seriously.
“Many disagreements [and misunderstandings] come from words being used with different meanings for the speaker and listener”
Let me add to you lexicon-fusion list the word ‘Corporation’, and in particular the common [mis]understanding of what the term ‘Corporate State’ means in the context of ‘Fascism’.
The concept of Corporation in Mosley’s Fascism has nothing to do with the Private Oligarchical Corporations (such as Blackrock and Vanguard, or the privately-owner Rothschild Central Banks) that are extinguishing the life out of humanity today
Fascism’s concept of a Corporation is a government body overseeing each sector of private business, industry and society. For example, Mosely proposed a Corporation overseeing the function and operation of Banking and Finance, a Corporation overseeing the Doctors and Nurses sector, a Corporation overseeing the welfare of the disabled and unemployed.
See Sir Oswald Mosley in “FASCISM: 100 Questions Asked and Answered”
Oh that's so interesting, Julius! That makes so much sense from the etymology of the word as body and nation, or an embodiment of a function of the nation--like the kidneys or lungs.
Thanks for that link, I'll preserve it in a draft because it's so critical to understanding how we've gotten here.
The term “utopia” comes from ancient Greek. It literally means “no place,” but it's also a pun on “eutopia,” meaning “good place.” In other words, utopia is a good place that doesn't exist. It’s an ideal like Platonic solids. EUtopias DO exist. EUtopias are realistic and attainable. A well maintained home with an attractively landscaped yard is one example of a EUtopia.
Wow! I had to look that up for myself, and I'm an etymology freak. Does Europe then derive from good something?
I think for my purposes, utopia is still fitting because it is designing an imaginary place, that can't exist without the system change of taking back money creation backed by the houses at the local level. But the design can't wait until it's possible--it would be like not designing a house until you're ready to build. So it has to be pragmatically worked out, and modeled, and argued--definitely argued.
Thanks for reading and adding this tasty etymology tidbit, Danway!
Excellent your project for 2025, timing is perfect too. 2025 will witness paradigm shifting changes.
Quote: nothing but system change can work…. without changing the system, changing any one thing is impossible.
Exactly!
Quote: "the apocalypse of The Great Striptease …if you’re not prepared, she may be stuffed into an orange jumpsuit!"
lol lol hilarious & accurate too
I love it that you get my nuance and my jokes too, Fadi!
I'm glad you share my feeling about 2025. Yes, there's paradigm shifting changes coming. I feel it in the wind.
I love that there are people in the world such as yourself that are willing to put in the time to imagine a new paradigm that values everyone.
Bravo!
Thank you, Philip! I'm writing one now that responds to Mathew Crawford called Bitcoin vs. the Caret. I'd say that 'a new paradigm that values everyone' is the major difference between the two. Bitcoin, if I understand it, is a way for people with enough money to risk to preserve or increase its value. The caret is a system that includes everyone equally. Of course, the caret isn't available without system change, whereas Bitcoin is available now. So that's another difference ;-)
Yes, agree, Philip. Tereza is clearly running ahead of most. I imagine we'll be considering new community based money systems before too long. Blueprints like hers, will have enormous value. Not least of which is the need to clean up the way we think (or really, tend not to think) about money.
I feel very much partnered with both of you in creating this new world.
I will continue sharing the "who and what we are" piece.
I am thankful to be in such company that I consider the new "Shifted" human.
What a lovely comment and vision. The feeling is mutual, Philip. Thank you.
hola, teraza. i laughed out loud at johan galtung's comment about economists! yes, talking with them is about as hard as talking to progressive liberal humanists and militant vegans. as stated before, when i got my economics degree i was so shocked and appalled at what i was being taught that i spent the next 7 years researching why it was a horrific world-wide religion and false in its premises and functioning.
your piece is a fine vision and pragmatic.
have you dipped into james lindsay at all? if you haven't you may find him worth while to attend as he gives a really deep concrete understanding of the ideological basis of much of it is actually a kind of quasi-hidden marxism (maoism) that has become imbedded in our economic and cultural structures. his information and conclusions provide a lexicon that allows for dialogue and perhaps the possibility of persuasion to happen with improving our ability to listen to their words with their understanding of them, which is frequently different than 'our' non-marxist understanding of them. i've linked a short introduction to him and then a longer one if the first appeals to you. and if you don't know about the fabians, an important group — all uk labour leaders have been fabians, including the current one, starmer. lindsay talks about them too. i've linked the fabian section in the second video link to the time of it.
short: James Lindsay | Woke Culture HAS NOT Gone Too Far - 6/8 | Oxford Union
https://youtu.be/3Zut8akB4h8
longer:
also lindsay talks about the fabians within the context of the marxist movement you discussed here and more. and he commented on shaw's open and active zeal for eugenics and their common intent with the marxists, although the fabians were critical of the means of the marxists, not their intention. lindsay also references to the really horrific public statements shaw makes in support of eugenics:
"Dr. James Lindsay: Historical and Conceptual History of Marxism" https://youtu.be/1JUWsh-d7E4
fabians begins here: https://youtu.be/1JUWsh-d7E4&t=2720
all the best with what is changing. everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.
🙏❤️🧘♂️☯️🧘♂️❤️🙏
Very clever and entertaining 'debate' by James Lindsay. Although debate has to be in quotes since he argues his side as a parody to ridicule it. Since my hands were full, YT flipped to the next video of Tommy Nguyen arguing why woke culture HAS gone too far. I found him very well reasoned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBnHgRgUR2I.
The problem, I find, with arguing -isms is they're a melange of ideas, some where we might agree. But seeing it as a whole discredits any idea by its association with other ideas. I don't agree with need-based economic systems that take away the product of some people's labor to distribute it to others. I also don't agree with greed-based systems that allow bankers to be the default owners of all the land and issue credit against it, so we all work for them. But arguing Marxism against capitalism is never going to get to these points of agreement.
Thanks for adding your deep and rebellious knowledge from an education in the belly of the beast ;-) Glad I could make you laugh with the Galtung quote.
hola, tereza. yes 'debate' for sure in quotation marks. (he and peter borghesian submitted and got peer reviewed humanity papers that were accepted that were 100% fake. they did it to discredit the 'woke' humanities in the universities when they saw the woke invading their university with demands for passing failing students. doing those papers initiated his deep dive into the ideology that even connects to the oligarchs: today i learned that klaus schwab was a student of prominent marxist and the destructive dialectic that they espouse!)
i agree with you about 'the' problem with arguing -isms! and like you i think that need-based 'economics' is unnecessary, that its premise of scarcity that founds it, and that it is greed is the premise that drive is is ... i was going to say incorrect and yet something like an economy is actually functioning with it so... those foundational principles are unnecessarily hurtful and actually less than optimally functionally. 'greed is not good' and yet is actually a rationalising principle for economic mathematical modelling! now that is crazy.
so, lindsay's research isn't really the defense of the current economic model, at least not explicitly. although he may lean that way without having thought about it too much. his dig is into how and why marxism has slid into our culture with enough virulence that we can be cancelled for calling a man a man. how did that happen?
so he is doing a deep dive into the roots of that and inferring the psychological substrate that allowed it to flourish. i think this is valuable information as we go forward building the alternative because understanding the enemy well gives us a mechanism to deflect the attacks and with that perhaps do aikido and foil them into a deep enough cognitive dissonance to revise their paradigm.
i repeat: lindsay isn't arguing a defence of capitalism per se, especially not directly. he is looking at the roots of marxism, why it is popular and everywhere today, the danger of its language to create confusion, what that language is and the impact it is having in our society now and its implications going forward. and, for your purposes, (our purposes?), why it is going to be a challenge and impediment to your idea of how to rebuild the empire. their ideology and language have become a deep metastasised thought-cancer or mind-virus that is very dominant in our current culture. very well hidden with code language that is a serious threat because it has a powerful pull and is dominant in the university systems, including economics. again, it is the ideology that has been powerful enough to cancel people who called a man a man because he wore a dress. and to rationalise as humane the genital and chemical mutilation of children.
i anticipate that with that kind of knowledge we have a much better ability to go forward and avoid some of their traps in deconstructing the empire and rebuilding it without that being the scorched earth destruction process that is built into the marxist dialectic. it was interesting to learn that it is grounded in the gnostic idea of life as a prison, a god-given trap that can be escaped only by its destruction though a cyclic process.
as noted, i've argued that our current economics is a religion because it moralises that the undeserving are to die. the deep roots of marxist ideology is that everyone needs to die by necessity of the dialectic process of cyclic destruction as the required method of creating the utopian return to the garden of eden. it is one of the reasons that so many died with stalin and mao, etc. — death is an accepted part of the process and their presence is a serious threat to anyone not on the right side of history. does that sound at all familiar with what we are waking up to in the time of the convid?
anyway, that is my pitch to you tonight. now to get back to developing my yoga centre for recovery from trauma.
all the best! good night.
I saw the word Capitalism and was immediately triggered – here is what Mosely says (see source link in another of my comments):
35. What is the difference between Fascism and Capitalism, since both admit the system of private enterprise ?
Mosley: In brief definition, Capitalism is the system by which capital uses the Nation for its own purposes. Fascism is the system by which the Nation uses capital for its own purposes.
Edit: “arguing Marxism against capitalism”
But remember, Marx WROTE “Das Kapital” – see Moseley’s response.
Great definition. I talk about capitalism being a meaningless term unless you specify who owns the capital, which are the assets that back the money. Banker capitalism = bad. Community capitalism = good.
Yes, absolutely
I always enjoy your ideas and how you articulate them. I wondered often if barter or scrip would develop in the post lunatic world and how it would work for me as a British Sign Language Interpreter, formerly facecto face, self employed freelance funded by Government money or companies fulfilling disability access obligations, now employed by a global language organisation, doing mainly health care via Video Remote Interpreting. My skill is essential for British Deaf people who could not afford to cover costs themselves. How would this work in our version of a Brave New World? P.S. There are startups trying to use AI to generate signed interpretation so I may be a redundant useless eater if it takes off....
Thank you for the compliment, Paul! I'm so pleased to find someone else who knows about scrip, which is exactly the foundation for my model in the way that Ben Franklin designed it for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As you know, there's a big difference between that and barter. The scrip was backed by land, which Franklin said couldn't be exported, unlike gold. Of course, our banking system found a way and now exports them in tranches.
My system is supplemental, and doesn't take anything away from existing gov't or corporate systems. So the short answer is that it wouldn't change your job at all. My model takes the power to issue money from bankers, but that's all. So money that's been entirely extracted is now available to use, not just as interest post-payment, but to issue as targeted credits in advance of debt payments.
So let's say that your commonwealth adopts my distribution model of ^100/ mo. in each of the areas of locally produced food, education, wellcare and home improvements. It seems like your skill would fall into both education and wellcare. People can use them for whatever they want in those categories, they just can't use them for rent or mortgage without earning them.
I would bet that in-person classes would be very popular. I'd take them! I've always wanted to learn sign language so I could dance with my hands ;-)
I have volunteered to interpret Mike Yeadon's Silver Bullet speech. Working on logistics while taking on prostate cancer on my own. Rejected Allopathic Oncology. The UK NHS will not deviate from "Standard of Care"!
Do you read Tonika's Visceral Adventures, Paul? She rejected allopathic treatment for breast cancer and got a clean bill of health one year to the day from her diagnosis. The doctors called her 'the control group' and she was hoping they'd take that seriously: https://visceraladventure.substack.com/p/i-cancer-can-can-denouement.
If only we could use the Bradbury Pound again....
What made the scrip so powerful is that it was backed by the mortgages and collected in taxes, which were controlled by the local community. In my book, I trace alternative currencies and show how, when you take out the percentage for housing and taxes, $100 is reduced to pennies in circulation after four exchanges. So the 'multiplier effect' isn't a full accounting for leakage.
I hope this will be a full series on your substack - reading your book. What a great way to expand the conversation. Thanks, Tereza.
Yes, indeed Kathleen. I'm recording the first chapter today.
😊 Look forward to it.
What a pleasant surprise! And what a delight!! I favour audio readings and this is a treasure. I am able to just pick up the book and follow along and highlight – and beautifully read ‘n all. (I have also only recently ‘read’ Chapter 9 on Libya.)
The passage I particularly highlighted was:
“What matters is that we have a way of talking about and thinking about concepts when the words to describe them have been corrupted and often turned into their opposites, not by accident.”
And …
“Get your hands in the dirt.”
I will pass on the Dance (that’s just introverted me), but I hope to share my experience with dirty hands on my substack in due course.
Oh good, we'll be able to experience spring vicariously, here where it's getting nippy!
I was pleased with that sentence too, Julius. It seems like a very long time ago that I wrote it, when I didn't know nearly as much about the intentional perversion of the words. And I feel, more and more, that the essential first step is learning how to think clearly and disagree productively. That seems to be where we keep getting stuck.
Oops, going backwards as I missed the beginning. For those of us that read the book, it’ll be a great treat to hear it read in your voice with your intonation. 🙌
I'm finding it fun to read too. It feels livelier getting to make my snarky comments out loud. The image of these stuck-up guys debating 'democracy' while the women and slaves coddle them makes me wonder how we ever took them seriously.
It was on me for never bothering to learn and letting anyone who seemed to “have more knowledge” lead me by the nose. Being a lot more diligent now!
“Many disagreements [and misunderstandings] come from words being used with different meanings for the speaker and listener”
Let me add to you lexicon-fusion list the word ‘Corporation’, and in particular the common [mis]understanding of what the term ‘Corporate State’ means in the context of ‘Fascism’.
The concept of Corporation in Mosley’s Fascism has nothing to do with the Private Oligarchical Corporations (such as Blackrock and Vanguard, or the privately-owner Rothschild Central Banks) that are extinguishing the life out of humanity today
Fascism’s concept of a Corporation is a government body overseeing each sector of private business, industry and society. For example, Mosely proposed a Corporation overseeing the function and operation of Banking and Finance, a Corporation overseeing the Doctors and Nurses sector, a Corporation overseeing the welfare of the disabled and unemployed.
See Sir Oswald Mosley in “FASCISM: 100 Questions Asked and Answered”
For example - https://balderexlibris.com/index.php?post/Mosley-Oswald-Fascism
Oh that's so interesting, Julius! That makes so much sense from the etymology of the word as body and nation, or an embodiment of a function of the nation--like the kidneys or lungs.
Thanks for that link, I'll preserve it in a draft because it's so critical to understanding how we've gotten here.