Thanks for that background. I appreciated hearing that arc. I relate! Used to listen to Dem Now, too, got pulled into the Climate change nonsense for about 5 minutes, but have never done the deep-dive you did, that informs your book. Not surprised by that.
Big changes in a positive direction coming. For many, it's why we're here. (IMO). XO
The empire is dismantling... I am not that sure... We will probably get to know a lot more about the hidden face of politics, some scandals, some scapping goats... But society, the people are not still ready for truth. They dont want-need the truth because they are accomplices of the situation. These are very long tectonic movements that we can't fully perceive in our life span. In my opinion a profound "even more" painful transformation of society os going to take place during the next 20 years. Thank you for the video.
Here are some of my clues that it may change faster than that, and that having a new plan ready is something we should be prepared for in four years, lest the opportunity be wasted:
1. A vast number of Democrats were disillusioned by Obama. Some went over to Trump. That second disillusioning is coming, imo, so more people will be ready to give up on electoral change, freeing their focus and energy.
2. There's much talk about 'ending the Fed' but little about what would replace it. When I wrote my book, almost no one knew it was a banking cartel and not a branch of gov't. There's still a lot of confusion about that, which is why people think replacing the Treasury with Bitcoin is a good thing. I'll be writing about that, but the dollar is a house of cards that's teetering.
3. When I wrote my book, few people understood that the dollar was a digital currency. That's being mainstreamed in preparation for CBDC. Whether people think CBDC is good or bad, it paves the way for them understanding that money isn't real but a construct.
4. They're also hinting that they may end Social Security. Providing an alternative way to continue it indefinitely would mobilize over half of the country, who've paid into it.
5. As Israel implodes and the rest of the world develops an alternative payment exchange, the US will be left without resource and labor colonies to exploit. So the 'bribe' of cheap food, energy and goods is disappearing. We can't afford to spend our time being servants to the rich, and making them richer, if we don't have slave labor providing for our needs.
So I think this could be a bloodless and relatively painless revolution (I'd put relatively in italics if the comment box let me), if we play our cards right. But that means taking the possibility for change five years from now seriously. The longer we delay imagining what we want and working out the logistics (I'd underline that if I could), the longer the future will wait. The purpose of time is to give us time to come back into our right mind, imo.
That was an interesting background story, thanks! I'm probably a Very Bad Person for laughing at the cat story. But no laughs at the story of your daughter and the guy on the bike. I've had some "I must be a terrible parent" experiences, but nothing like that.
You're allowed to laugh at the cat story. It was such a fluke that the cat, liking the warmth of the keyboard, would have managed to hit 'save' after depressing the delete key through a whole chapter. Had I recognized then that this was trying to tell me something, I may not have needed the painful lesson of the guy on the bike.
But, with compassion for myself, I was so desperate to be more than 'just a housewife' and chauffeur for my kids. Kids need you when they need you, but it leaves a lot of free time when they don't, especially if they're in school. I wanted to communicate so badly. I've written a story about that incident called Where We Fail, I might read that into the stack another time.
But it wasn't the only time. We once left the middle daughter at a McDonald's playground in Tucson and got back on the freeway before we realized she wasn't in the way-back of the minivan. The same daughter once followed someone else's legs on the boardwalk while we had out-of-town visitors we were showing around. The more people keeping track of kids, the less tracking happens, is my general conclusion.
And soon after the man on bike incident, we went to an open house at the school and I was busy telling my ideas to another mom and locked the youngest, still in her car seat, in the parking lot while we walked to the school. The alarm went off and I still didn't get it. It wasn't until we got to the school and the other daughters ran off in two directions that I asked someone which way Cassandra went and they said, "I didn't see her". I ran back and unlocked her. I was crying but she was calm. I asked what she'd done. She said, "At first I was scared and then I drank my juice box." And I realized that she's the most like me--not absent-minded but other-minded. Even with the man on the bike, she wasn't scared and wasn't going anywhere with him. As Veronica told her, "you wanted an adventure but what you did wasn't safe. You knew mom would be back. You need to be smarter about staying safe." I could never have held her responsible for her actions, being too busy blaming myself. But Veronica was right. And it's a lesson that stayed for all of us.
I know about that self-blame. I was thinking of the time I lost track of my toddler son in the crowd at the Santa Cruz County Fair. I found him after only a few seconds, but the panic and the "what have I done???" mental self-kicking were intense for those few seconds. It still feels vivid 40 years later.
There's much I want to say about this episode, Tereza! In no particular order...
I laughed at the cat episode as well, having had the experience of my cat pressing "submit" on a theatre festival application, before I had actually attached THE PLAY that I was submitting. I had to write to them and tell them what happened, certain that they thought I was making it all up a la "my dog ate my homework."
Also... I left my kids in the car at a garage sale in CT so I could run in and grab... something, I don't remember what. When I got back out to the car there was a gaggle of hens tsk-tsking, and they told me in no uncertain terms what a lousy mother I was. It burned... and yet I also knew they were wrong. I knew my three, I knew how capable they were. My eldest was 8 or 9, I think. A hundred years ago, a kid that age would be entrusted with far more than his/her younger siblings!
Hearing how you got from the socially-conscious at-home mom to where you are today was a real joy, I think because it's easy to assume that you sprang from the head of Zeus -- you brilliant goddess, you. It's a wonderful story, one that I hope inspires others to dive into their passion with the same gusto.
Oh those nefarious cats! I think it's magic that you're a playwright. It's like you create clay figures and then animate them, putting words in their mouths, only better because they bring their own twists and turns.
I've done the mad dash into a store with a baby asleep in the locked car ... and gotten away with it. In Europe, I remember toddlers in strollers outside of shops and no one gave the mother the stink-eye. Then again, a grandparently couple walked off with my sister-in-law's stroller in an LA mall. Fortunately the baby was in her mother-in-law's arms. She chased them down and accosted them, but what else could she do? Despite their clear intentions, there was no proof. So that's chilling.
Oh, you say the sweetest things, Mary. Funny, I used that same phrase about springing fully formed from the head of Zeus when introducing myself (as a student) at a Sun magazine writer's retreat. I think it was in the context of starting so late and having 50 years of pent-up talking to myself.
Ha! Yes on the book club! I see it taking shape early in the new year, and I've got some plans in mind--although that mainly means creating a new space in the garaj mahal with a secure connection and good acoustics for zoom recordings. I seem to be on a roll, and I'm about to make you more jealous of my backdrops.
Playwriting feels like magic to me, too, if I'm totally honest. I miss it. I'm scheming to find some way of bringing it back...
I'm also glad you're on a roll. Speaking of rolls, I wish you could see my green-with-envy eyerolling about your backdrops! I have such longing for a room of my own, a la Virginia Woolf. I'd take a shed, even. A lean-to? Especially with the holidays coming. My MIL announced that she's coming for 8 days over Christmas. My visit to the garaj mahal may be sooner than I thought.😅
Haha! You're welcome anytime. But if you're coming alone, I'm scooping you into the house. You'll still have a room ... or two ... of your own. It's not going to be like this forever, Mary. You just need to make yourself happy a few more years, while things sort themselves out. You'll see. I've made similar predictions to other friends, and they can still recall the exact time when I said it, when they were projecting the way things were into the future. And then it all changed.
Oh wow! So that's who you are! Everything you just said made total sense. I had no idea. I thought you were on another plane, one that was way beyond my comprehension. I woke up when I saw Jeff Brown and said to myself, "Wait! don't I know that guy?" I used to follow him. Does he still live in China? And Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report. I read everything of his that crossed my path. Of course, no one I knew wanted to hear about any of that stuff. It was just too "far out there" for them. I did have a tendency to go to extremes.
OK then, Tereza, I'll make a point of listening to your next Broadcast reading from your book. You have really important things to share. Thank you, and forgive my weirdness and rush to judgment, actually more of myself than you. I admire your courage.
Hello, Ronnie and thanks for this sweet comment! I think that Jeff doesn't live in China right now, but I forget where he is. Not in the US, I know. And yes, I loved Glen Ford. I think he's one of the most astute thinkers I've ever come across.
You and I both have a tendency to go to extremes!
You are totally forgiven for everything you've ever done, thought, or thought you've done. Let me forgive you for anything you ever do in the future. Go forward, guilt-free, my child! You can take anything I say with a grain of salt or a shaker.
BTW, Mary once told me how you're the reason she even has a substack. You were her loyal reader, who always commented, and let her know that she had something to say. From the depths of my soul, thank you for that. Our whole Apocaloptimist group wouldn't exist without you, and how much sadder my life would be.
Thank you, Tereza, you just made me laugh out loud. I really appreciate the absolution, but sending me off "guilt-free" would be wishful thinking. I'm sure you've heard of how guilt is the gift that keeps on giving, and I got a triple dose of it early on.
And nice of you to give me recognition for being Mary's loyal reader, which was so easy to do because what she wrote and how she wrote always really touched my heart. But she gets all the credit for the Apocaloptimist group, and then some. So, thanks again. see you soon.
I really wish you hadn’t cut that chapter out of the book! It colours the tapestry of your world so well and it might be beneficial for some to know the perspective with which the topics are being approached. I wonder if the tides have turned where instead of getting a “pat on the head” for being a subversive housewife writing about the economy, those pats would go out to the yet another “economist” doing that. Mothers manage the household in incredibly efficient ways while juggling all other manners of responsibilities. It makes sense to ask a housewife how she’d run the country.
Yes, I think that raising kids to be participating members of a household--not successes in the outside world of school and work--should be a prerequisite for governing at any level, the smaller the better.
Thanks for saying you wish I hadn't cut that chapter. It will be an incentive to put out a new version and put it back in. I forgot how fond of it I was until I read it again aloud.
Tereza, I have just been working my way through your “How to Dismantle an Empire” youtube (and substack) playlist and came to the one titled “Freedom's the Answer”.
At 9:20 you talk about Trade Freedom and illustrate your point with a discussion on the Firestone rubber plantations in Liberia involving child slave labour. [Incidentally, Bridgestone acquired Firestone in the mid to late 1980s I recall].
There is too much to cover in one comment response, but I would love to open up a conversation regarding the responses by Sir Oswald Mosley in “FASCISM: 100 Questions Asked and Answered”
I draw the reader’s attention to Questions 39 through 62 and beyond. I am sure most of Mosley's perspectives can be worked into your own Caretology model.
Tereza, I really enjoyed listening to this. The cat deletion bit! But oh, the daughter part where she was talking to the strange man... thank goodness you got home in time. Oh! is for origin!
Thanks for that background. I appreciated hearing that arc. I relate! Used to listen to Dem Now, too, got pulled into the Climate change nonsense for about 5 minutes, but have never done the deep-dive you did, that informs your book. Not surprised by that.
Big changes in a positive direction coming. For many, it's why we're here. (IMO). XO
The empire is dismantling... I am not that sure... We will probably get to know a lot more about the hidden face of politics, some scandals, some scapping goats... But society, the people are not still ready for truth. They dont want-need the truth because they are accomplices of the situation. These are very long tectonic movements that we can't fully perceive in our life span. In my opinion a profound "even more" painful transformation of society os going to take place during the next 20 years. Thank you for the video.
Here are some of my clues that it may change faster than that, and that having a new plan ready is something we should be prepared for in four years, lest the opportunity be wasted:
1. A vast number of Democrats were disillusioned by Obama. Some went over to Trump. That second disillusioning is coming, imo, so more people will be ready to give up on electoral change, freeing their focus and energy.
2. There's much talk about 'ending the Fed' but little about what would replace it. When I wrote my book, almost no one knew it was a banking cartel and not a branch of gov't. There's still a lot of confusion about that, which is why people think replacing the Treasury with Bitcoin is a good thing. I'll be writing about that, but the dollar is a house of cards that's teetering.
3. When I wrote my book, few people understood that the dollar was a digital currency. That's being mainstreamed in preparation for CBDC. Whether people think CBDC is good or bad, it paves the way for them understanding that money isn't real but a construct.
4. They're also hinting that they may end Social Security. Providing an alternative way to continue it indefinitely would mobilize over half of the country, who've paid into it.
5. As Israel implodes and the rest of the world develops an alternative payment exchange, the US will be left without resource and labor colonies to exploit. So the 'bribe' of cheap food, energy and goods is disappearing. We can't afford to spend our time being servants to the rich, and making them richer, if we don't have slave labor providing for our needs.
So I think this could be a bloodless and relatively painless revolution (I'd put relatively in italics if the comment box let me), if we play our cards right. But that means taking the possibility for change five years from now seriously. The longer we delay imagining what we want and working out the logistics (I'd underline that if I could), the longer the future will wait. The purpose of time is to give us time to come back into our right mind, imo.
I think it's dismantling before our eyes - and yes, a lot more to go.
I think probably a lot more people leave, who can't let go the old paradigm. Or perhaps they are not here for that part of it.
Agree we can't see the larger span in a single lifetime but yes -massive change over the next 20 years. Won't be easy. But will be fascinating. :-)
That was an interesting background story, thanks! I'm probably a Very Bad Person for laughing at the cat story. But no laughs at the story of your daughter and the guy on the bike. I've had some "I must be a terrible parent" experiences, but nothing like that.
You're allowed to laugh at the cat story. It was such a fluke that the cat, liking the warmth of the keyboard, would have managed to hit 'save' after depressing the delete key through a whole chapter. Had I recognized then that this was trying to tell me something, I may not have needed the painful lesson of the guy on the bike.
But, with compassion for myself, I was so desperate to be more than 'just a housewife' and chauffeur for my kids. Kids need you when they need you, but it leaves a lot of free time when they don't, especially if they're in school. I wanted to communicate so badly. I've written a story about that incident called Where We Fail, I might read that into the stack another time.
But it wasn't the only time. We once left the middle daughter at a McDonald's playground in Tucson and got back on the freeway before we realized she wasn't in the way-back of the minivan. The same daughter once followed someone else's legs on the boardwalk while we had out-of-town visitors we were showing around. The more people keeping track of kids, the less tracking happens, is my general conclusion.
And soon after the man on bike incident, we went to an open house at the school and I was busy telling my ideas to another mom and locked the youngest, still in her car seat, in the parking lot while we walked to the school. The alarm went off and I still didn't get it. It wasn't until we got to the school and the other daughters ran off in two directions that I asked someone which way Cassandra went and they said, "I didn't see her". I ran back and unlocked her. I was crying but she was calm. I asked what she'd done. She said, "At first I was scared and then I drank my juice box." And I realized that she's the most like me--not absent-minded but other-minded. Even with the man on the bike, she wasn't scared and wasn't going anywhere with him. As Veronica told her, "you wanted an adventure but what you did wasn't safe. You knew mom would be back. You need to be smarter about staying safe." I could never have held her responsible for her actions, being too busy blaming myself. But Veronica was right. And it's a lesson that stayed for all of us.
Thanks for getting that.
I know about that self-blame. I was thinking of the time I lost track of my toddler son in the crowd at the Santa Cruz County Fair. I found him after only a few seconds, but the panic and the "what have I done???" mental self-kicking were intense for those few seconds. It still feels vivid 40 years later.
There's much I want to say about this episode, Tereza! In no particular order...
I laughed at the cat episode as well, having had the experience of my cat pressing "submit" on a theatre festival application, before I had actually attached THE PLAY that I was submitting. I had to write to them and tell them what happened, certain that they thought I was making it all up a la "my dog ate my homework."
Also... I left my kids in the car at a garage sale in CT so I could run in and grab... something, I don't remember what. When I got back out to the car there was a gaggle of hens tsk-tsking, and they told me in no uncertain terms what a lousy mother I was. It burned... and yet I also knew they were wrong. I knew my three, I knew how capable they were. My eldest was 8 or 9, I think. A hundred years ago, a kid that age would be entrusted with far more than his/her younger siblings!
Hearing how you got from the socially-conscious at-home mom to where you are today was a real joy, I think because it's easy to assume that you sprang from the head of Zeus -- you brilliant goddess, you. It's a wonderful story, one that I hope inspires others to dive into their passion with the same gusto.
I'm so honored to be your friend. xox
PS When is the book club meeting?
Oh those nefarious cats! I think it's magic that you're a playwright. It's like you create clay figures and then animate them, putting words in their mouths, only better because they bring their own twists and turns.
I've done the mad dash into a store with a baby asleep in the locked car ... and gotten away with it. In Europe, I remember toddlers in strollers outside of shops and no one gave the mother the stink-eye. Then again, a grandparently couple walked off with my sister-in-law's stroller in an LA mall. Fortunately the baby was in her mother-in-law's arms. She chased them down and accosted them, but what else could she do? Despite their clear intentions, there was no proof. So that's chilling.
Oh, you say the sweetest things, Mary. Funny, I used that same phrase about springing fully formed from the head of Zeus when introducing myself (as a student) at a Sun magazine writer's retreat. I think it was in the context of starting so late and having 50 years of pent-up talking to myself.
Ha! Yes on the book club! I see it taking shape early in the new year, and I've got some plans in mind--although that mainly means creating a new space in the garaj mahal with a secure connection and good acoustics for zoom recordings. I seem to be on a roll, and I'm about to make you more jealous of my backdrops.
Playwriting feels like magic to me, too, if I'm totally honest. I miss it. I'm scheming to find some way of bringing it back...
I'm also glad you're on a roll. Speaking of rolls, I wish you could see my green-with-envy eyerolling about your backdrops! I have such longing for a room of my own, a la Virginia Woolf. I'd take a shed, even. A lean-to? Especially with the holidays coming. My MIL announced that she's coming for 8 days over Christmas. My visit to the garaj mahal may be sooner than I thought.😅
Haha! You're welcome anytime. But if you're coming alone, I'm scooping you into the house. You'll still have a room ... or two ... of your own. It's not going to be like this forever, Mary. You just need to make yourself happy a few more years, while things sort themselves out. You'll see. I've made similar predictions to other friends, and they can still recall the exact time when I said it, when they were projecting the way things were into the future. And then it all changed.
Oh my... "It's not going to be like this forever, Mary. You just need to make yourself happy a few more years, while things sort themselves out." 😭
Oh wow! So that's who you are! Everything you just said made total sense. I had no idea. I thought you were on another plane, one that was way beyond my comprehension. I woke up when I saw Jeff Brown and said to myself, "Wait! don't I know that guy?" I used to follow him. Does he still live in China? And Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report. I read everything of his that crossed my path. Of course, no one I knew wanted to hear about any of that stuff. It was just too "far out there" for them. I did have a tendency to go to extremes.
OK then, Tereza, I'll make a point of listening to your next Broadcast reading from your book. You have really important things to share. Thank you, and forgive my weirdness and rush to judgment, actually more of myself than you. I admire your courage.
Hello, Ronnie and thanks for this sweet comment! I think that Jeff doesn't live in China right now, but I forget where he is. Not in the US, I know. And yes, I loved Glen Ford. I think he's one of the most astute thinkers I've ever come across.
You and I both have a tendency to go to extremes!
You are totally forgiven for everything you've ever done, thought, or thought you've done. Let me forgive you for anything you ever do in the future. Go forward, guilt-free, my child! You can take anything I say with a grain of salt or a shaker.
BTW, Mary once told me how you're the reason she even has a substack. You were her loyal reader, who always commented, and let her know that she had something to say. From the depths of my soul, thank you for that. Our whole Apocaloptimist group wouldn't exist without you, and how much sadder my life would be.
Thank you, Tereza, you just made me laugh out loud. I really appreciate the absolution, but sending me off "guilt-free" would be wishful thinking. I'm sure you've heard of how guilt is the gift that keeps on giving, and I got a triple dose of it early on.
And nice of you to give me recognition for being Mary's loyal reader, which was so easy to do because what she wrote and how she wrote always really touched my heart. But she gets all the credit for the Apocaloptimist group, and then some. So, thanks again. see you soon.
I really wish you hadn’t cut that chapter out of the book! It colours the tapestry of your world so well and it might be beneficial for some to know the perspective with which the topics are being approached. I wonder if the tides have turned where instead of getting a “pat on the head” for being a subversive housewife writing about the economy, those pats would go out to the yet another “economist” doing that. Mothers manage the household in incredibly efficient ways while juggling all other manners of responsibilities. It makes sense to ask a housewife how she’d run the country.
Yes, I think that raising kids to be participating members of a household--not successes in the outside world of school and work--should be a prerequisite for governing at any level, the smaller the better.
Thanks for saying you wish I hadn't cut that chapter. It will be an incentive to put out a new version and put it back in. I forgot how fond of it I was until I read it again aloud.
Tereza, I have just been working my way through your “How to Dismantle an Empire” youtube (and substack) playlist and came to the one titled “Freedom's the Answer”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F420jDIgDU&list=PLS5WYJBpd75ulyTPBaSedRh9OV9PSaIMG&index=9
At 9:20 you talk about Trade Freedom and illustrate your point with a discussion on the Firestone rubber plantations in Liberia involving child slave labour. [Incidentally, Bridgestone acquired Firestone in the mid to late 1980s I recall].
There is too much to cover in one comment response, but I would love to open up a conversation regarding the responses by Sir Oswald Mosley in “FASCISM: 100 Questions Asked and Answered”
For example - https://balderexlibris.com/index.php?post/Mosley-Oswald-Fascism
I draw the reader’s attention to Questions 39 through 62 and beyond. I am sure most of Mosley's perspectives can be worked into your own Caretology model.
Tereza, I really enjoyed listening to this. The cat deletion bit! But oh, the daughter part where she was talking to the strange man... thank goodness you got home in time. Oh! is for origin!