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Turnip (2021) by Japanese artist, Yuko Kurihara, born in 1976.*
NOT ALL GERMANS
“Not all Germans were the same,” my mother said,
recalling the first days
in her home town after the invasion.
When the Nazis entered,
they began
with a public execution in the market square —
fifty men seized at random in the streets.
The next morning, posted on the gate
of the public park: POLES, JEWS
AND DOGS NOT ALLOWED.
It was early, the air soft with fine drizzle.
My mother happened to be passing by.
Her eye caught the sign, hand-printed in German.
Frozen to the spot, she kept
reading and re-reading the sign.
No one was around except for a German
officer. Red in the face, he walked up
to the poster and tore it off —
crumpled it in his fist, threw it in a waste-basket.
Not looking at my mother, he hurried off.
And now she is done with that crumpled scrap
of memory she unfolded
with her quiet voice. But I wonder if that officer,
blurred by September drizzle and the rain of time,
ever cared to stroll in that park where the leaves
bled the glory of gold and red —
the one German who felt
ashamed, the one who had earned
the right to enter through that defiled
ornamental gate.
~ Oriana
*
I knew this man for several years and he was an extremely kind and polite old school gentleman. During the war he was a member of the 22nd Regiment, 10th SS Panzer Division. He related a story about one evening in a Russian town. He was walking down a street when he heard piano music coming from a house. He went over and through the open doorway saw a teenaged girl sitting there playing Mozart. Entranced he stood there listening, but then she looked up and stopped. She said, “Are you surprised that we subhumans can play Mozart?” He told me he felt so chagrined and embarrassed that he couldn’t even speak, so he just withdrew as quickly as he could.
*
WHY COLLECTIVE FARMS FAILED
~ The Communist theory posits that large-scale, mechanized, collectively owned farming is much more productive than small and middle-sized private farming.
This was why in 1929–1933 Stalin refused the use of land to private peasants and transferred it to collective and state farms. Peasants were required to work on these farms for token money, with limited chances of escaping to the cities. They were required to deliver a huge production quota imposed by the state under the threat of prosecution and/or starvation.
They were allowed to share the produce between themselves only after delivering the quotas. The token money they earned was calculated on the basis of worked man-days. These didn’t account for qualifications or the quality of individual output.
The experience of all Socialist states has shown that peasants as state employees are consistently less productive than private farmers. Crop productivity drops. The cattle get sick and die. Much of the harvest rots before being processed.
Several factors are at play here:
In the fields and farms, you can’t achieve the level of managerial supervision you have on the industrial floor.
In farming, tacit knowledge, continuous experimentation, and improvisation influence output in many more ways than in manufacturing.
In farming, slackers are much harder to locate than on the assembly lines and other industrial facilities. The more division of labor and the more large-scale farming you introduce, the more time lag between the input and output you create. Try to supervise that, especially if your people see no connection whatsoever between hard work and good pay.
The overinvestment in agricultural machines and the arrival of chemicals in the 1950s helped to alleviate some of these shortcomings. But our agriculture never fully recovered until the collapse of Communism in 1991.
In the picture below you see college-level students in the USSR picking potatoes. This was our annual ritual. In autumn, millions of city dwellers were sent by their employers to help collective and state farms to harvest potatoes. This was 100% manual work. The farms simply didn’t have enough machines or people to manage that themselves. The machines were too crude, often malfunctioned, and left behind most of the crop. We saw a great many machines just sit there rusting, broken by careless use, incompetent repairs, and absent spare parts. ~ Dima Vorobiev
Russian college students picking potatoes
Alisdair Gaston:
Well, that and the commitment to meeting various year-plan benchmarks came at the cost of long-term soil productivity. I believe it was Krushchev who resorted to eliminating fallow seasons from rotation and even ordered the fields planted with the same crops every season, to rapidly diminishing returns as the soil became exhausted.
You’d think long-term planning would be one of the strengths of a command economic system. But in agriculture, each five year plan was pursued at the direct expense of every future one.
Liviu Vasile:
My father told me that after the completion of collectivization (in our country, Romania, 1963) the peasants had to work for the “colectiva", many times on their former lands. Some of the works such as ploughing were carried with tractors (which the peasants hated because they associated with losing of land), but many of those were still carried by hand. If the state robbed them from their land (for a peasant land was sacred) it was ok also for them to steal from the state. If they were put to harvest corn for the Colectiva (by hand) they would pick one of two and then all the village returned at night to carry the rest at home for their remaining livestock. Later they introduced corn harvesting combines which managed to gather only half of the harvest, leaving a lot of good corn to be gathered at night. Of course, it was not the 50′s when stealing grains “from the state" could send you in prison or the Canal (our own Gulag built at the brilliant advice of Comrade Stalin to our own communists as way of getting rid off opposition).
One of my first memories as a child, 3 years or so, is crawling from our yard in my grandparents village to the nearby cornfield. It was late afternoon, sun was about to set and the yellow field of corn there were dozens of people, our neighbors, my grandparents quietly gathering corn from the cooperative field. It was precisely our land, and each neighbor was “stealing" from its former property. To the amazement and panic of all I began to scream: do not steal the corn from the CAP! The neighbors yelled at my parents, make him shut up, but they were also laughing.
Nearby my grandparents had untill 1986 or so a beautiful orchard of Anna Spath plums which made very big plums. At one point the Colectiva cut the trees and plowed the land and we were no longer allowed to use it, only what remained in our fenced yard. My father who had planted those trees and carried after them for many years (they made and excellent plum brandy — our țuica was visible affected. With my childish curiosity (5-6 years )and seeing him so sad I asked him while leaving to our city apartment why they cut the trees and we are not allowed to used he replied to me: Because the State took it and you cannot fight the State.
I couldn't see the State anywhere on that hill, but I understood that State is something you should be afraid of. Little did I know how many of our relatives, grandparents were beaten down in the 50′s by the communists, how many stood hidden in the forests or rotten in jails for not wanting to give their land. At the end of the 80′ time was running short for the communists, but it was bad until its end. That's why I would say to Mr Putin that the collapse of the Soviet Union and communist regimes was the greatest blessing for Eastern European nations, Russians included. Maybe Russians after so much time under Soviet rule and oppression they could not imagine a different better world.
Mike de Angelo:
In 1929–1933, the government had defeated most of the other groups that might oppose communism, or the central governments particular vision of communism. The peasant farmers were then targeted. The creation of large collective farms were as much an effort to subjugate this part of society as to increase productivity.
Annoy Young:
Re: the “annual ritual” part, North Korea news still reports such city “volunteers” incl. military personnel join in farming routinely. Foreign embassy staffs take part too, including ambassadors for “ friendship”, in activities of sowing, plowing, and harvesting.
Miguel Arzak:
Also the countryside was consistently and gradually depopulated. The lack of incentive to remain a rural worker meant that everybody who had the smallest chance would emigrate to cities.
James Thomas:
In July 2001 I was lucky enough to travel from Moscow to Mongolia by rail. It was during the time the hay crop was being harvested. It was noticeable that the hay seemed to be largely cut by hand, was not baled and was pulled into loose stacks such as you might see in Britain before the second World War.
Was this because the farms had been de-collectivized following the collapse of the USSR ? Or was it because the Soviet system did not produce machinery for such operations?
Dima Vorobiev:
Both. I never saw machine-baled hay anywhere in the USSR. And after it all collapsed in 1991, most of surviving collective farms struggled from a dearth of funding.
James Thomas:
Interesting. The first nation to put a man in space but it was still using pitch forks on its farms!
Piers Sutton:
I have read that transportation played a role as well, and often food simply didn’t get to where it was needed.
Stephen Oneil:
What was interesting was the abundance of food bought from farmers personal plot which they sold in Farmers Markets and or just on the street….very expensive compared to State Stores but sought after….Capitalism was practiced and enjoyed by a few…
Mirko Nik:
You forget one very important detail — lack of motivation.
Dima Vorobiev:
Lack of motivation was everywhere, but in farming it was especially detrimental.
Rok Ružič:
I heard this story; allegedly it happened often on Soviet collective farms.
Potato harvest time came, and there were no workers to pick the potatoes, and the machinery was all broken. So they sent in a regiment of conscript soldiers to pick the potatoes. The potatoes were stacked on one huge pile. Then the local communist party official came by, entered “so and so many tons of potatoes were harvested” in his forms, and everyone went home, while the huge pile of potatoes was left there to rot. Locals were not allowed to take the potatoes, because that would be stealing from the workers, and the potatoes rotted away, while more often than not, both local people, as well as people in nearest cities, didn't have enough to eat.
Atul Barry:
Wasn’t another factor the lack of a robust distribution system? I used to hear during the Soviet days that millions of tons of wheat would rot on the farms because of that.
David Mason:
Another consequence of the poor results of collectivization was providing private “garden plots” of a few hundred square meters (“sotniks”) each. Wherever the climate is suitable for agriculture, these plots still ring towns with populations in the thousands, as well as cities at a greater distance, in which case “dachas” (cottages) were improvised from whatever materials could be scrounged from the State.
It is interesting to look at these plots with Google Earth or Google Maps’ satellite views. They survived the breakup of the Union, helped stave off mass starvation in the ensuing economic dislocation, and are still easy to tell apart from residential districts on one side, and the much larger fields of collective and industrial farms on the other.
Despite Marxist optimism that collectivized and industrialized agriculture would be more efficient, these small plots, occupying at most a few percent of tillable land, produced something like half the Soviet (and immediate post-Soviet) diet, especially in terms of value at prevailing prices.
Roy Sakabu:
Mao did the same thing in China with the “Great Leap Forward”. Even though Nikita Khrushchev told Mao to stop because it didn’t work, Mao ignored him and doubled down. As a result upwards of 55 MILLION Chinese died. That’s more than everyone who died in WW2! The Chinese dispute this and say it’s as low as 15 Million. Oh sorry, that’s a much better number. Josef Stalin said something like “the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic”. The number has no meaning to someone who doesn’t care.
History has shown, the more concentrated the power, the higher the chances of a BIG mistake. Vlad, Xi, are you listening?
Good lesson for The Donald too.
Dima Vorobiev:
I’m aware that the blame game in our propaganda shifted from Stalin to Khrushchev over the last 15 years.
Khrushchev surely has his share of responsibility for the plight of our agriculture.
But thanks to Khrushchev we avoided the famines that took lives of millions on Stalin’s watch in 1932–33, 1941–42, and 1946–47. Moreover, it was mainly under Khrushchev we had in retail groceries a relatively stable supply of meat and other foodstuff that increasingly disappeared from the shelves toward the end of Brezhnev’s rule.
Karl Machshevez:
Communism does work, but only in a pre-consumer goods society. Once there are limited consumer goods or better cuts on meat, or better homes, communism will always fail.
Joe Milosch:
I wonder why scholars ignore the effects of the Feudal system on the Russian collective farming experiment when comparing collective to capitalistic farming. The feudal farming system developed over centuries, and by the late 1800s, it reached the end of its profitability. Several similarities exist when comparing feudal farms to collective farms; the Czar owned and controlled the land, and the Nobility managed it.
The state owned the collective farms, and the Kolhoz chairman managed them. In practice, the chairman was as powerful as the lord. Like the noble, he controlled the means of production. As in the end times of feudalism, the chairman couldn’t kill or sell the worker. The noble could kick the peasant serf off the land, and the chairman could send a worker to Siberia by labeling him a defiant Kulak.
Still, the peasant serf and the worker remained tied to a particular farm or Collective. The Russian Czar did away with the Feudal system in the 1860s, and it was less than 100 years when Stalin created the collective farm system. The abuses of the Feudal system were alive in the memory of the Russian farmers. Thus, it wasn’t believable for Stalin to say that collective farming was good for the farmers.
The people thought it was propaganda when they heard that collective farming was a good business model because it provided employment, innovative farming methods, and increased profitability. Stalin’s ignorance about the similarities between the two systems created confusion in his messaging. As a result, the people felt a deep animosity towards the collective farm system and used sabotage to make the collective farm system unworkable.
Oriana:
What saved Poland from famines was the private ownership of the farms. The Communist government somehow knew better than try to impose collectivization and risk riots and famines. The farmers who worked the land also owned the land — and they knew how to take care of it, and of the livestock. Father-to-son and mother-to-daughter passing of knowledge paid off nicely. Produce, poultry, etc, brought good prices at “farmer’s market” type places. You might say it was the triumph of capitalism.
Now, one controversial (from a Western point of view) thing that the post-war Polish government did was expropriate the large landowners — those who only employed others. These “social parasites” found themselves chased from their mansions and estates. Landless farm hands were given a plot of land, and the mansions were turned into schools, post offices, and other “community buildings.” So yes, you could say that that was the end of the remnants of the feudal system.
Even though there were some voices saying the expropriated landowners should have gotten paid, somehow nobody felt sorry to see them go. My father used to say that the Polish agrarian reform was the best thing the Communists ever did.
*
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can be kept only by understanding. ~ Albert Einstein
A TYPICAL RUSSIAN FAMILY (Misha Firer)
I bet you were expecting a family photo with happy mom and dad and their two kids, beaming at the camera. I went with statistics rather than emotions and this is what statistics have shown me:
Divorce rate: above 50%
Children more often live with their mothers than fathers.
So minus dad.
Children born/woman: 1.4
With regional statistics of fertility rates constantly manipulated, it means it’s more likely there is 1 child per family than 2 or more.
So mom and her son or daughter.
A generation ago, such families were called “incomplete”. Now it’s just an average family.
The family is coming home on subway, tired and asleep after a fun day in the park.
We are missing a very important member of the family.
Grandmother, or babushka.
Russian men live on average 16 years less than women.
So it’s only babushka.
Babushka stays home with the child when mom is at work. Often mom works two jobs to have ends meet so babushka becomes the child’s second mom. She brings him/her up. She has a strong will to live at least until the child grows up and comes of age. ~ Quora
Oriana:
For ethnic Russians, the birth rate is probably even lower — maybe 1.1
What pulls the average up is the higher birth rates in the Turkic republics.
Even so, what we see is a shrinking population. Some even talk about a "demographic catastrophe."
- The current population of Russia in 2022 is 144,713,314, a 0.27% decline from 2021.
- The population of Russia in 2021 was 145,102,755, a 0.35% decline from 2020.
- The population of Russia in 2020 was 145,617,329, a 0.09% decline from 2019.
- The population of Russia in 2019 was 145,742,286, a 0.06% increase from 2018.
WHY THE SOVIET CONSUMER PRODUCTS WERE SO SHODDY
~ We were a Communist country. Our best resources were all diverted into the military-industrial complex. It often produced state-of-the-art items, but it all was under deep secrecy.
The civil sector lived off the leftovers, which is why there was little to boast of. Most of the attempts to cross over into consumer products failed. Our rulers didn’t seem to be much bothered, as long as the tanks, rockets and command comms worked fine.
Another factor, we were not very strong on maintenance and support. We produced many reliable and durable things, but once they needed a new spare part or some fine-tuning, the owner’s life could become very complicated. ~ Dima Vorobiev
Brian Teeter:
During the time of the Soviet Union, Russians were fond of telling scathing jokes on themselves.
Like this one: “We have the world’s largest hydrogen bomb, the world’s largest hydroelectric plant, and the world’s largest microchips!”
Another that I recall:
A Soviet worker has toiled for years for the Motherland and carefully saved his rubles to buy a car. He goes to his Lada dealer to place his order. The conversation went like this:
“Comrade car dealer, I have been an outstanding Soviet citizen and worker. I have come with a deposit to place an order for my Soviet socialist people’s Lada automobile.”
“You can expect your order to be delivered to us in eight years, four months, and twelve days,” the dealer replied, barely looking up from what he was doing.
“Will that be a Tuesday or a Wednesday?” asked the man.
“Why does it matter, comrade?” said the now annoyed car dealer.
The man replied, “Well, if it’s Tuesday, that’s when the plumber is coming!”
Michael Flatstone:
Tupolev, Ilyushin and Antonov(Ukranian, I know) were, and still are, incredibly forward thinking and capable companies that introduced some of the most rugged and durable aircraft designs ever produced(The Tu-154 and Il-76 immediately come to mind).
I would just hate to be an operator with an aircraft out of service at some distant locale due to a failure, and needing a part right away. I would imagine it's a bit better now, but unless i keep a stock of parts on hand, all the benefits of those rugged planes are out the window once I realize it will be laid-up for weeks or months waiting for something that would be an on-the-shelf item for a Boeing or Airbus.
Like I said though, fantastic aircraft, no doubt. My hat is always tipped for Russian aerospace designers and engineers.
Speaking of planes and jokes, I came across this:
Once on an Odessa flight to Miami, the air stewardess Nastya delivered drinks. And the first pilot turned on the autopilot, stretched, and said dreamily, now I'm gonna have a cup of coffee, and then I'm gonna screw Nastya. He did not notice that the intercom was not off and that everything he said was heard in the cab.
Nastya dropped the tray and ran towards the cabin. On the way, she encountered an old man who said, Honey, where are you in such haste? He said he'd have coffee first!
**
*
ALCOHOLISM IN THE SOVIET UNION
~ “A Soviet person did not have any incentive for self-development and self-improvement, or a chance to work towards achievable goals and tangible results, unless he could become a national hero by winning a golden medal in the Olympic Games or flying into space.
Career-wise and materially he was doomed to be stuck in a rut for his whole life.
Entrepreneurship was banned, and regardless of his energy level or skills or brains, his absolute ceiling was a 200 ruble monthly salary.
There was no incentive to innovate, attend education courses, invent new things. Why read professional books and improve your skills, if they would pay you exactly the same wages anyways?
Even if his invention was ingenious and found practical application, which would have made him rich in the West, all the inventor could look for was a letter of honor and a week-long vacation in “friendly” Romania.
The Soviet system was no different from a penal colony with its citizens serving life sentences: no day-to-day changes, endless boredom and gray monotony, and no escape with wardens watching your every step.
However, there was one escape: you could get drunk.
Soviets were allowed to drink in their workplaces without risk of being fired: there was zero unemployment, because USSR was the best country in the world. It also had the best healthcare in the world and the best education in the world, which almost anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union will tell you, if you ask.
Soviet government and society had a very tolerant attitude towards alcoholics. Alcoholism was not viewed as addiction and no counseling and treatment were offered, except for dodgy anti-scientific “coding.” Alcoholics could watch anti-alcohol special films, sort of like in “Clockwork Orange,” or undergo hocus-pocus “magnetic resonance therapy”.
Tolerance towards alcoholics was reflected in the Soviet films. Drunks were shown as good-natured people who lapsed only for a while, but would soon be “normal” again.
Police officers chided stumbling drunks on the street and told them to drink “in moderation”.
Alcoholism had never been a deal-breaker in marriages, and Soviet women had to take for granted their drinking husbands and take care of them. If a husband beat his wife, well “if your husband beats you, it means he loves you” as the well-known Russian proverb says.
Not a single person on the TV publicly proclaimed that alcoholism was a serious social issue and something had to be done about it.
The reason was simple: if the authorities did, they would have to agree on the point that it was necessary to overhaul the Soviet system to bring meaning into the lives of the individuals, which they had denied them for so long.
In his fundamental work “Drugs,” philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz described alcohol as a “social drug,” which helped to avoid social unrest and made people obedient like sheep. There was gradual social degradation, but it was offset by the preservation of status quo.
A bottle of vodka in the USSR cost only 2 rubles and 87 kopecks. You could get three rubles from your wife and with the change buy a stinky processed cheese “Wave”, to consume with vodka to make it look civilized.
Unlike most of the consumer goods and foodstuff, vodka was always in stock and could by purchased anywhere in the country. Even in the decrepit minimarts of the rural areas where one could find only sprats in tomato source and loafs of bread, there were rows of vodka bottles: Stolichnaya, Russkaya, Moskovskaya or Pshenichnaya.
In addition to vodka, USSR also produced a lot of fruit and berry “wines” that just like vodka were drunk only for the sake of getting drunk. This fermented compote of berries or apples with low-quality alcohol was mass-produced and streamlined to get all those men into a state of continuous stupor from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.”
The situation was considerably worse in the rural areas than in the urban centers. When I was a child spending summers with my grandparents in a small settlement up north, the male population was divided into two groups: drunks and non-drunks. There were about a third, or maybe even half drunks.
Being a drunk meant you drink vodka until you literally collapse on the floor. There was no “tipsy”or “under the weather” — you drank and then you passed out. After you awoke, you could go on a hunt for a new bottle of vodka. That was the only meaning in life for many Soviet men.
Most of the male residents of the settlement were employed at the local mill. On the day they were paid their wages, they would head directly to a vodka kiosk. Unable to wait, men opened their purchased vodka bottles and drank straight from them. Then they would try to make it home, stumbling and staggering with zombie eyes.
Not all of them did, and their wives went out to collect them. I remember walking down the street counting drunks lying on the road and pavement.
Vodka was also used as currency. My grandmother never allowed my grandpa to drink vodka, and stocked up on it to buy wood to burn stove, manure, fresh meat and much else, and pay for the labor around the garden when my grandpa’s back hurt.
To this day, in Russia there’s no stigma or social condemnation associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This is just what men do. They drink vodka or something worse, get drunk, beat up their wives, get into fights, but mostly stagger around their hometown or village, and then pass out.
There’s no counseling and no treatment except for bogus “decoding” that now includes ”ray-beaming”.
After all, vodka is the glue that keeps the fabric of the Russian society together. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Ciprian Eliu Ivanof:
Khrushchev attempted an anti-alcohol campaign (in moderation) and Gorbachev tried more seriously after clear reports life expectancy was declining due to alcoholism. Of course, the KGB correctly observed that alcohol was a vital coping mechanism for the people and the both state finances (from alcohol taxes) and political stability would suffer.
Kenneth Sheaf:
So what’s the problem as long as they survive to the point where they are no longer good cannon fodder? Just think of how much the tobacco industry has saved the social security trust fund.
Jonny Holmberg
If you’re like me, you may try to understand more, among other things why so many Russians literally drink themselves to death. Why is Russia so different? I visited The Soviet Union once, in 1980, just because a girl I fancied at the time wanted to see Samarkand and talked me into going with her. Not proud of that decision, but I made it, learned something and cried of relief when I crossed the border back home. Russia is scary, as I could see back then with my own eyes, and I have tried to fathom how it became what it is.
There are enlightening things to read and watch. Please consider reading some classics, to start with (like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol or Gorky) to approach the ”soul” of Russia. Then move on to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the monumental works of Svetlana Aleksyevitch. Watch the brilliant 7-hour documentary Trauma Zone, which is about the USSR and Russia between 1985 and 1999, ending when the young ”bureaucrat” Putin is put in place by the drunken bear Yeltsin. You’ll find it for free on Youtube. In these sources, we get to hear the voices of Russians and other (ex-)Soviets, not just other people describing Russians and other (ex-)Soviet folks from a distance.
Of course there are external good sources, too, to use on the quest of trying to understand, like Anthony Beevor. He has, among other things, written extensively about the battle of Berlin and Russian warfare at that time, as well as the new Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921. These works are quite important when trying to understand the extremely grim times before, during and after both the revolution and WW2. No wonder so many of all those tormented human beings drink.
Mike:
The Soviet Union was horribly depressing and dehumanizing.
Oriana:
There are two components to alcoholism: genetic and environmental. Alcohol is not heroin — it’s only mildly addictive UNLESS you happen to have the genes that increase the odds of addiction. The environmental part is easy to guess: stress, and the kind of culture that’s provides easy access to cheap alcohol.
Understanding the genetic part — not anything the person could choose —makes compassion rather than contempt a more reasonable response.
Another interesting part about genes and alcohol is that, especially in people of Mediterranean descent, there are genes that protect against alcoholism. Alcohol simply doesn’t deliver much of a high — while causing unpleasant physical symptoms. A person with the protective genes simply isn’t motivated to drink. He or she will raise a toast because that’s part of the culture, but may have trouble finishing even one glass.
The #1 country with highest alcohol consumption used to be Lithuania — but no longer. In this case, an improvement in the standard of living may have been an important factor — and access to treatment. And something that Misha alludes to: hope for a better future.
*
TOP TEN COUNTRIES WITH MALE ALCOHOLISM RATES
Top 10 Countries with the Highest Rates of Alcohol Use Disorder/Alcoholism (males):
Russia - 36.9%
Hungary - 36.9%
Belarus - 33.9%
Latvia - 28.8%
Slovenia - 23.5%
Slovakia - 22.8%
Poland - 22.7%
Estonia - 22.2%
South Korea - 21.2%
Lithuania - 19.9%
When it comes to women alcoholics, we find a very interesting difference. Now the leading country is the United States (10.4%) followed by Russia (7.4%) by and Sweden (7.3%). Hungary places next, and then — South Korea! South Korea is followed by Belarus, Austria, UK, Latvia, and Slovenia.
Putin, an abstainer himself, introduced alcohol restrictions and increased alcohol taxes. It seems to have worked: the consumption of alcohol has gone down. But, as Misha points out, there is also the home-made brew.
*
HOW ALCOHOL CONQUERED RUSSIA; ALCOHOL SALES AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE
~ Picture the Russian alcoholic: nose rosy, face unshaven, a bottle of vodka firmly grasped in his hands. By his side he has a half-empty jar of pickles and a loaf of rye bread to help the devilish substance go down. The man is singing happily from alcohol-induced jubilation. His world may not be perfect, but the inebriation makes it seem that way.
Today, according to the World Health Organization, one-in-five men in the Russian Federation die due to alcohol-related causes, compared with 6.2 percent of all men globally.
The Russian alcoholic was an enduring fixture during the Tsarist times, during the times of the Russian Revolution, the times of the Soviet Union, during the transition from socialist autocracy to capitalist democracy, and he continues to be in Russian society today. As Heidi Brown described in her 2011 article for World Policy Journal, the typical Russian alcoholic sits on broken park benches or train station steps, smoking a cigarette and thinking about where his next drink will come from and whether he can afford it.
The Russian government has repeatedly tried to combat the problem, but to little avail: “this includes four ... reforms prior to 1917, and larger-scale measures taken during the Soviet period in 1958, 1972, and 1985. After each drastically stepped-up anti-alcohol campaign, [Russian] society found itself faced with an even greater spread of drunkenness and alcoholism,” explains G.G. Zaigraev, professor of Sociological Sciences and Head Science Associate of the Institute of Sociology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the journal Sociological Research.
“The Kremlin’s own addiction to liquor revenues has overturned many efforts to wean Russians from the tipple,” as Mark Lawrence Schrad wrote in the The New York Times last year. “Ivan the Terrible encouraged his subjects to drink their last kopecks away in state-owned taverns” to help pad the emperor’s purse.
“Before Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in the 1980s, Soviet leaders welcomed alcohol sales as a source of state revenue and did not view heavy drinking as a significant social problem,” as Critchlow put it. In 2010, Russia’s finance minister, Aleksei L. Kudrin, explained that the best thing Russians can do to help, “the country’s flaccid national economy was to smoke and drink more, thereby paying more in taxes.”
By facilitating alcohol sales and distribution, the Kremlin has historically had considerable sway in recent decades. But Russia’s history with alcohol goes back centuries.
In the year 988, Prince Vladimir converted his nation to Orthodox Christianity, in part because, unlike other religions, it didn’t prohibit drinking, as Brown explained in her World Policy Journal article. According to legend, monks at the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin were the first to lay their lips on vodka in the late 15th century, but as Russian writer, Victor Erofeyev notes, “Almost everything about this story seems overly symbolic: the involvement of men of God, the name of the monastery, which no longer exists (chudov means “miraculous”), and its setting in the Russian capital.” In 1223, when the Russian army suffered a devastating defeat against the invading Mongols and Tartars, it was partly because they had charged onto the battlefield drunk, Brown wrote.
Ivan the Terrible established kabaks (establishments where spirits were produced and sold) in the 1540s, and in the 1640s they had become monopolies. In 1648, tavern revolts broke out across the country, by which time a third of the male population was in debt to the taverns. In the 1700s, Russian rulers began to profit from their subjects’ alcoholism, as Brown, who spent 10 years covering Russia for Forbes magazine, explained. “[Peter the Great] decreed that the wives of peasants should be whipped if they dared attempt to drag their imbibing husbands out of taverns before the men were ready to leave.”
Peter the Great was also, according to Brown, able to form a phalanx of unpaid workers by allowing those who had drunk themselves into debt to stay out of debtors prison by serving 25 years in the army.
“Widespread and excessive alcohol consumption was tolerated, or even encouraged, because of its scope for raising revenue,” Martin McKee wrote in the journal Alcohol & Alcoholism. According to Brown, by the 1850s, vodka sales made up nearly half the Russian government’s tax revenues. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin banned vodka. After his death, however, Stalin used vodka sales to help pay for the socialist industrialization of the Soviet Union. By the 1970s, receipts from alcohol again constituted a third of government revenues. One study found that alcohol consumption more than doubled between 1955 and 1979, to 15.2 liters per person.
Some have claimed that heavy consumption of alcohol was also used as a means of reducing political dissent and as a form of political suppression. Russian historian and dissident Zhores Medvedev argued in 1996, “This ‘opium for the masses’ [vodka] perhaps explains how Russian state property could be redistributed and state enterprises transferred into private ownership so rapidly without invoking any serious social unrest.” Vodka, always a moneymaker in Russia, may have been a regime-maker as well.
Before 2009, there have been only two expansive anti-alcohol campaigns in Russia, both of which took place during the Soviet Union: one under Vladimir Lenin and the other under Mikhail Gorbachev. All other leaders have either ignored alcoholism or acknowledged heavy alcohol consumption but did nothing substantial about it. As Critchlow wrote, “Under the Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev regimes, harsh penalties were imposed on those who committed crimes while intoxicated, but heavy drinking was not viewed as a threat to society, perhaps because the leaders, who themselves liked to indulge, saw the use of alcohol as a safety valve for low morale.”
“Gorbachev announced ... legislation in May 1985, after a large-scale media campaign publicizing the Kremlin’s new war on alcoholism—the third most common Soviet ailment after heart disease and cancer,” Nomi Morris and Jack Redden wrote in Maclean’s.
It was largely seen as the most determined and effective plan to date: The birthrate rose, life expectancy increased, wives started seeing their husbands more, and work productivity improved. However, after a spike in alcohol prices and a decrease in state alcohol production, some started hoarding sugar to make moonshine, and others poisoned themselves with substances such as antifreeze, as Yerofeyev points out.
The people’s displeasure with Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign can be summarized by an old Soviet joke: “There was this long line for vodka, and one poor guy couldn’t stand it any longer: ‘I’m going to the Kremlin, to kill Gorbachev,’ he said. An hour later, he came back. The line was still there, and everyone asked him, ‘Did you kill him?’ ‘Kill him?!’ he responded. ‘The line for that’s even longer than this one!’”
Despite Gorbachev’s efforts, by the end of the Soviet era, alcoholism still had a stronghold in Russia. Its success ultimately lead to its failure: spending on alcohol from state outlets fell by billions of rubles between 1985 and 1987. Authorities expected that the loss in revenue would be offset by a predicted 10 percent rise in productivity, but such predictions were ultimately not met.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the state’s monopoly over alcohol was repealed in 1992, which lead to an exponential increase in alcohol supply. In 1993, alcohol consumption had reached 14.5 liters of pure alcohol per person, as the journal World Health found in 1995, making Russians some of the heaviest drinkers in the world.
To date, “taxation on alcohol remains low, with the cheapest bottles of vodka costing just 30 rubles ($1) each,” as Tom Parfitt explained in the Lancet in 2006. “There is a simple answer to why so many Russians fall prey to alcohol…it’s cheap. Between 30-60% of alcohol is clandestinely made, and therefore untaxed. A large quantity is run off on ‘night shifts’ at licensed factories where state inspectors are bribed to remove tags on production lines at the end of the working day.”
Vladimir Putin has criticized excessive drinking, and Dmitri Medvedev has called Russia’s alcoholism a “natural disaster,” but besides the rhetoric, little has been done to tighten regulations on the manufacture of liquor, and no coherent programs have been implemented to combat alcoholism. Gennady Onishchenko, Chief Public Health Inspector of the Russian Federation, has urged major spending on the treatment of alcoholism as a response to the tripling of alcohol-related mortality since 1990, arguing that prohibition and excise tax hikes are counterproductive.
Today, the dominant “treatment for alcoholism in Russia are suggestion-based methods developed by narcology—the subspecialty of Russian psychiatry which deals with addiction,” as Eugene Raikhel wrote in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Narcology, otherwise referred to as ‘coding’, is a procedure intended to create a subconscious aversion to alcohol, as Critchlow explained.
“While many aspects of addiction treatment in Russia had been radically transformed during the 1990s, the overall structure of the state-funded network had not changed significantly since the 1970s, when the Soviet narcological system was established,” wrote Eugene Raikhel of the University of Chicago. Other, less common methods that have been used to treat alcohol and drug addiction include brain “surgery” with a needle and “boiling” patients by raising their body temperatures, as Critchlow noted, which is intended to ease severe withdrawal symptoms. Conventional treatments for alcoholism, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, are available in Russia, but they are not officially recognized by the Kremlin and do not receive government funds, making them scarce and very poorly funded.
The Russian Orthodox Church has met self-help programs with suspicion as well. Critchlow explained, “Despite their record of success with many alcoholics and drug addicts, the self-help programs Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous . . . have [been] met with resistance in Russia, especially from the medical profession, government officials, and the Russian Orthodox Church clergy.” She further wrote, “Members of the Russian Orthodox clergy have expressed distrust of the self-help movement, often because of the perception of it as a religious cult invading the country.”
In 2010, the Church described AA as an "effective instrument in rehabilitating drug and alcohol addicts,” while saying it would develop its own alcohol program.
Meanwhile, many Russians still prefer more traditional remedies. "I went to the AA and I couldn't believe my ears. They have no God and they say that they conquer alcoholism themselves. That fills them with pride," one Orthodox believer wrote on his blog. "I went back to the Church. There, they conquer it with prayer and fasting.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/how-alcohol-conquered-russia/279965/
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THE SOVIET UNION AND “ETHNIC CLEANSING”
~ Ethnic communities were considered by NKVD in the 1930s to be hidden power centers with a potential of opposition to the Soviet rule.
In keeping with the six-sigma approach to state security—better to take ten innocents than let one enemy slip away—that was dominant at the time, NKVD systematically went about exterminating ethnic elites not affected by previous purges. Jews remained spared from these sweeping purges until the late 1940s when Stalin purged the entire Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and launched a campaign against “rootless Cosmopolitans”.
The ethnic purges followed largely the same pattern. Consider as an example the Directive No. 50215 of December 11, 1937, signed by the NKVD boss Nikolai Ezhov, that targeted ethnic Greeks. It stated:
The materials of the investigation have established that the Greek intelligence is actively engaged in espionage, sabotage and insurgent work in the USSR, being directed by the British, German and Japanese intelligence services.
This work is performed among the Greek communities in the Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar regions of the North Caucasus, Donetsk, Odessa and other regions of Ukraine, in Abkhazia and other republics of the Transcaucasus, in the Crimea, as well as the scattered groups of Greeks in various cities and localities of the Union.”
"Along with espionage and sabotage work in the interests of the Germans and Japanese, the Greek intelligence is performing active anti-Soviet nationalist activities, recruiting the support from a broad anti-Soviet stratum (kulaks, tobacco growers and gardeners, former traders and entrepreneurs, smugglers, speculators, currency dealers and others) among the Greek population of the USSR" .
The “Greek operation” started on December 15, with a particular focus on the Donetsk and Krasnodar region. The total number of victims has not been established. The documents declassified by Ukraine show that in the framework of the "Greek" operation at least 22,000 Greeks were executed. Wikipedia quotes 50,000 Greeks perished from the execution in total, out of about 300,000 of the entire minority in the USSR.
Below, a monument in Magadan in the Far East to Greeks who perished in the Gulag. The purged Greeks were first acknowledged innocent victims of Stalinism in 2015, almost 25 years after the fall of the Soviet rule.
When we (Poles) had been documenting Stalin’s mass murders concerning the Poles, mostly Soviet Belarus and Ukraine, some ghastly “funny” trivia emerged. It turns out that, for example, NKVD had numeric goals of postal stamp collectors, in each community, to be killed.
I GUESS the rationale was that stamp collectors have connections to outside world, and know about outside world, more than average people.
In some aspects, Soviet Union was a gigantic human breeding project. They wanted to breed a specific type of a human, and were weeding out undesirable traits and knowledge.
Tobacco farming requires a lot of specialized knowledge. People involved were probably much better educated than average, had means to educate themselves better (tobacco means profits), had to know more about markets, even financial markets. All that was a death warrant. [Ethnic Greeks in Russia were tobacco growers.]
Lee Goldberg
Yiddish language education and publishing began to be repressed in the late 1930s as part of a general turn toward backpedaling on korenizatsiya (‘indigenization’) and instead emphasizing Russian language and nationalism, which impacted all Soviet minorities.
The statement that Soviet authorities viewed ethnic groups as potential threats to their power is correct. I would only add that the moment an ethnic leadership circle came to be seen as legitimate by their community was a threat to the legitimacy of the Soviet government and the Moscow-appointed leadership of supposedly autonomous republics, oblasts, and so forth.
In the case of the Ukrainian and Belorussian Jews, that moment arrived towards the end of the War, when Yiddish writers from the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (originally put together by the NKVD) together with the Russian writers of Jewish origin, Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, prepared to publish the Black Book of Soviet Jewry (The Black Book of Soviet Jewry - Wikipedia).
Soviet Jews knew that the writers told the truth about the systematic Nazi genocide of the Jews, which the government sought to suppress. A letter to a newspaper proposing a Jewish autonomous district in Crimea (where there had been Yiddish-speaking agricultural collectives in the 1920s) gave the government enough of an excuse to accuse Jewish writers of supporting separatism in the service of Zionism and hostile powers. After the Crimea case, there was the Birobidzhan affair (dyelo), and so on, down to the Doctors’ Plot near the end of Stalin’s life. All, I would argue, to combat the threat of community leadership regarded as more legitimate than the Soviet authorities.
Emil Perhinschi:
During the persecution of the Poles a question was asked “who is Polish” and the answer was “whoever we want”, based on ethnic registration papers, territory that was sometimes in the past controlled by Poland, “*ski” names, having one ancestor registered as being Polish or having lived in territory that was controlled by Poland, or having a “*ski” name etc.
The purges were made more awful because they were so arbitrary.
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RUSSIA’S EMPIRE MENTALITY
Russia is an empire, same as Rome or Nazi Germany. Empires need to expand and conquer other countries. Russians are not like Poles, for example, who live in their Poland, and just want a good life — make money, raise children, travel to other countries, trade with other countries for the sake of mutual well-being. Russians don’t. Not all of them of course, but a considerable number of Russians hold very anti-liberal, anti-Western views.
Today Russia is quiet a poor country. Places like Moscow, Saint Petersburg and a few other cities are more and less developed but go to some small town and a village and what do you see?
Dirt, poverty, most men are alcoholics, everything is falling apart. People who live there are not known for their tolerance and good manners. It’s brutality, distrust of anyone different and despising weakness. They are hostile to the West and associate Western countries with LGBT (needless to say, most Russians are very homophobic). If you give Russia freedom as it was in the 1990’s, there would be anarchy and survival of the fittest. Putin merely took the country back to the same trail it was on before — an empire.
He couldn’t allow himself to be removed from power so he created a system where he would stay in power indefinitely and Western democracy is not compatible with this type of government. He needs to justify his stay in power (“West is trying to destroy us”, etc) and he needs to act accordingly. He is the leader of an Empire and empires expand. So, in 2014 he seized an opportunity to annex a part of Ukraine. Most people supported it but you can’t just rest on laurels forever. Empires expand, remember?
So, on February 24 he attacked Ukraine. Ukraine chose Western model of government and Russian government cannot allow country that is so close culturally to Russia to be a successful Western country. People will start doubting Russian regime and maybe force Putin out of power (unthinkable!). Victor Yannukovich (Ukrainian president before 2014) was pro-Russian and had dictatorial mindset, which was very satisfying for Russia, just like their relationship today with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko who is one of the few leaders supporting Russia in the war against Ukraine.
Now, majority of Russians have empire mindset, they view themselves above certain countries. Ukraine is “our bitch”, which dared to become Westernized and with the help of propaganda which depicts Ukrainians as nazis, hating Russians and oppressing Russian speakers they think that attack on Ukraine was fully justified, taking their territory is fine since they view it as Russian land. Killing civilians is not a big deal, human life isn’t worth a kopeika. Military glory is far more important.
Of course, not every Russian is like that but there are far more people with empire mindsets in Russia than people who support Western democracy.
Back in the day there was a program on Russian TV called “Poyedínok” (Duel).
Two people are having verbal debate and audience of Russia votes on whose position they like better. Usually debates were between a supporter of Western liberalism and a supporter of “empire mindset” (communists, statists, fascists, you name it) and never, I mean never, have supporter of Western values won, they always lost decisively. It was back when you can at least invite a person with this political position on TV. Today opponents of Putin’s regime will not even be allowed near TV station.
So, yes, Russia in its present form is an empire and empires need to expand their military presence. Empires can still have great ballet, literature and strong chess players but military expansion always comes first. ~ Dimitry Kuzmin, Quora
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PUTIN’S RUSSIA AGAINST THE WORLD (MISHA IOSSEL)
~ Putin's Russia against the world.
It has no ideology, no unifying national agenda, and is run by lawless mafia.
So what is it fighting for?
Apparently, as per the Russian propaganda talk shows on TV, for the kind of future in which Russian children don't face the "satanist" danger of growing up to be gay, lesbian or transgender.
That's about it. I kid you not. This is the best they could come up with.
In other words, Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine, committing countless war crimes there, having many tens of thousands of its own young men killed in the process, having its own army demolished and exposed for all to see as a dissolute barbaric mob, ruining its own economy and facing unabating worldwide anger, contempt and condemnation as the repugnant terrorist state that it is — for no reason at all. For the poisonous voices in Putin's addle-pated head of a trashy, thieving small-time KGB factotum suddenly becoming beset with deranged dreams of imperial glory.
All that — for nothing. For that insect of a human being's madness.
How ugly and pathetic. ~
Tom Beck:
Right-wing authoritarians are not “for” anything. Their movements are defined, organized, and united by what they are against.
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Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of its perpetrators. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Oriana:
Maybe if we add the victims of the Maoist regime, then we get to the mind-blowing body count. But I still think WW2 is probably #1, with Communism as #2. The eminent historian Steven Kotkin estimates the number of the victims of Communism at 67 million.
(It’s possible that the 1918 influenza pandemic exceeded this number, but estimates vary.)
In any case, it’s hard to think of another instance of a theory that promised earthly paradise and in practice proved a catastrophe.
Religions were smarter in that they promised a posthumous paradise and "sold" an invisible product. Yet the existence of different religions still led to blood shed, century after century. In any case, there is a lot of similarity between a secular utopian ideology such as communism and a powerful fanatical religion (currently Islam).
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WHY THERE WAS NO NUREMBERG TRIAL FOR STALIN AND HIS HENCHMEN
~ The post-Soviet Russian elite—including President Yeltsin and President Putin—are almost all former card-carrying members of the Communist party and its youth organization. We can hardly expect from them an ideological trial that would question their own past and their right to hold power in the new democratic Russia.
The main victim of Communism and Stalinism was the Russian people. Yet, it didn’t seem to consider itself a victim even on the wave of anti-Sovietism in the 1990s. There were some voices in President Yeltsin’s entourage in favor of such a trial, but he refused to heed. Nowadays, Putin considers his association with the Soviet secret police, the main tool of Communist repressions against our nation, to be a professional honor.
None of the former Soviet republics considered the matter important enough to be pressed forth on the international level. Nationalists in the Baltics and Ukraine found little support for the idea of an anti-Communist Nuremberg among the Western powers. The US and other NATO countries in the 1990s considered getting on the good foot with the new Russian rulers much more important than settling ideological scores.
No one cares to bring historical justice upon the executioners of Russian people if Russia itself doesn’t find it a big deal. ~ Dima Vorobiev
Oriana:
Stalinist Russia committed war crimes in the countries they “liberated.” Especially notorious was the rape of German women, which seemed to be a deliberate policy. Stalin dismissed it as “soldiers having a little fun.”
Regardless, how was Stalin to be seized in order to be put on trial in the Hague? The only practical option would be sentencing him in absentia, which might mildly annoy him.
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Fear of the former Soviet Union was also exaggerated. USSR was weaker — and much poorer — than America and Western Europe. In spite of heavy military spending at the expense of consumer goods, the US and Western Europe combined had more and better weapons and military forces.
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FINLAND’S RECORD-BREAKING “WHITE DEATH” SNIPER
~ Standing at just over five-foot tall and with a ready grin, Simo Häyhä might not look like a killing machine.
But the former farmer from Rautjärvi, southern Finland, was just that — racking up 505 confirmed sniper kills for his country in its battle against the Soviet Union during the Winter War of 1939-40.
Häyhä, who died 15 years ago aged 96, played an instrumental role in the conflict, during which 25,900 Finns died to protect their new-found independence against the Soviets, who lost 126,900 soldiers.
Aged 33 when the war broke out, he quickly acquired a fearsome reputation, striking the enemy unseen and unheard from hidden positions up to 300 yards from his target.
Nicknamed The White Death, Häyhä was a prime target for the Soviets, who struck him with mortars and heavy artillery to halt his killing spree, which once claimed 25 men in one day. This image, in which Häyhä poses with an M/28-30 in his winter camouflage, shows how he was able to blend into the icy terrain of eastern Finland.
With his white hood and a long jacket Häyhä was perfectly camouflaged inside the covered foxholes he dug into the icy landscape of eastern Finland, which the USSR invaded on November 30 1939.
Other tricks Häyhä used included freezing the snow around his hideout, so it would not fly up in the air when firing with an M/28-30 rifle, and covering his mouth to stop the steam rising from his breath.
Häyhä and his compatriots fought bravely against the Red Army, which was one-million strong and advancing along several fronts.
Despite the perils of his situation, Häyhä professed to never feel fear, and would obsessively clean his weapon to make sure it worked in -20C temperatures and visit 'favorite' firing positions at night to prepare.
Häyhä's his luck ran out after 98 days, when he was hit in the jaw and spent a week unconscious in hospital before waking up on the precise day countrymen signed the Peace of Moscow on March 12, 1940.
After the war he continued his life as a farmer, in his new home in Ruokolahti, by the Finnish-Russian border. ~
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5148231/How-five-foot-farmer-deadliest-sniper-history.html
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WILLIAM PELLEY, AN “AMERICAN HITLER”
~ William Dudley Pelley embraced the wave of fascism that washed over society in the 1930s and openly declared “the time has come for an American Hitler.”
During the 1936 U.S Presidential election, Pelley, the son of a Methodist minister from Massachusetts entered the race as a candidate for the Christian Party.
Formerly a foreign correspondent across Europe and Russia in the years after World War I and a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1920s, he gained infamy by becoming leader of the Silver Legion of America and the Christian Party in the 1930s.
Pelley embraced the wave of fascism that washed over society in the 1930s and openly declared “the time has come for an American Hitler.” He printed his own mouth organ called Pelley’s Weekly which focused its written attacks on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, left wing politics and African-American, Jewish and Irish people among various other minorities.
On January 30th 1933 Pelley founded the Silver Legion of America in Asheville North Carolina. Membership was open only to white Christian males while the uniform consisted of a silver shirt, blue trousers and a red L emblazoned on the breast of the shirt.
The Silver Shirts, as they became known, turned out across many towns and cities across the United States putting on mass rallies where Pelley spoke about restoring American society through extreme patriotism. The right wing rabble rousing Pelley targeted minorities through his hate filled speeches and to the delight of his followers, Pelley promised to disenfranchise such groups if he ever rose to power in the Land of the Free.
At Silver Shirt rallies Pelley’s speeches hung heavy with words of grave threat. Pelley favored building a mental wall of isolation around America. He favored a ban on immigrants, most notably Jewish and Irish, from entering the United States. He favored a more militaristic approach to creating a moral America.
Pelley received funds through connections in Nazi Germany and set about building a world headquarters for the Silver Legion in a remote part of the Hollywood hills. At Murphys Ranch outside Los Angeles the flag of the Silver Shirts, silver with a red L on the upper left, flew over a sprawl Pelley envisioned to be the HQ of his militia and party despite the irony of his being vocally against Irish migrants. From Murphys Ranch Pelley established the Galahad College where Christian economics were the main staple of education for the future makers and breakers of America.
Today Murphys Ranch is an abandoned, overgrown and graffiti covered mess.
A year after forming the Christian Party of America (CPA), Pelley then used it as an engine to propel him to the White House or so he thought.
The 1936 Presidential election campaign in the United States was a particularly dirty one, with Roosevelt receiving most of the personal slander. During the campaign Pelley was largely ignored by the mainstream media who viewed him as a deluded outsider.
It was a chaotic election for Pelley who carried out an extensive country wide campaign called The Silver Cavalcade, which saw mass rallies often marked by violence. His running mate was the firebrand Silver Shirt leader from San Diego Willard Kemp and even though he had achieved in whipping up enough hysteria through his mass rallies, he did not succeed in winning over the political system and Washington state was the only one to let his name appear on the ballot paper.
On election day Pelley won just under 2,000 votes. He finished far behind both the Socialist and Communist candidates.
The violent tendencies of Pelley's supporters continued after the 1936 Presidential campaign. In 1938 three Chicago Silver Shirt meetings ended in riots. One of them saw Pelley’s right hand man Roy Zachery fined $15 for disorderly behavior and a stint in hospital when he received severe head injuries following a beating down from a policeman’s baton.
In 1939 five Silver Shirt members from Chicago smashed the windows of the Goldblatt Brothers department store. The streets became mini warzones for those attending Silver Shirt rallys, but Pellleys supporters were all too often met by counter-demonstrators which usually resulted in the Silver Shirts turning on their heels.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 Pelley dissolved his Silver Shirts and Galahad College disintegrated. That same year state police in California took over Murphy’s Ranch and Pelley's dream of a morally upright, fascist and isolated America faded away.
Pelley would spend the rest of his years battling the federal government through court cases. Pelley was later sentenced to 15 years for sedition and after serving just under eight years he was released. Pelley died at the age of 75 in 1965.
The populist politics of the 1930s which propelled Pelley and his ilk were summed up by the writer Mary McCarthy. In 1936 she wrote about the atmosphere around Pelley’s presidential campaign in The Nation magazine as being “wild, comic, theatrical, dishonest, disorganized, hopeful and not revolutionary.”
https://headstuff.org/culture/history/william-pelley-silver-legion-america/
Oriana:
It's striking that Pelley did not call his party a Fascist party; instead he cleverly called it the Christian Party of America, confirming the prediction that fascism would come to America dressed in the American flag and bearing a cross.
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JEREMY SHERMAN ON THE REVENGE OF THE DEFEATED
~ Maybe the American Revolution ended better than most because there wasn’t a big backlash from the prior powers.
If we're learning one thing these days, the defeated don't just surrender and assimilate. The past is sticky. People get stuck in it. The defeated don't just retire or admit they were wrong all along. MAGA now represents everything the US defeated in its past great wars. Fascism, racism, monarchy – they're all vying for a comeback.
I've long recognized that ideological movements only anticipate the day of victory and the happily ever after. They don't foresee the inevitable revanchist backlash.
As a naive hippie, I didn't foresee the inevitable backlash. I thought we had the squares on the run. They'd soon see the errors of their ways and come around to our way of thinking.
Many a revolution results in psychopathic leadership to tear society away from its sticky past. Lenin needed Stalin. Robespierre went crazy. The GOP sees Trump and DeSantis as necessary to complete their revolution.
I don't believe in Revolutions. I think all Woke movements (including MAGA the biggest woke movement in the states today) go for broke and break.
My point here was that the US had a less sticky past. England was far away and when it surrendered it returned to typical statecraft meddling. The Native Americans were easily routed.
Oriana:
And, thanks to terrific luck, the American Founding Fathers were a remarkably practical and cool headed bunch, arguably with the exception of Thomas Jefferson — brilliant but liable to get carried away in the revolutionary fantasies — fortunately restrained by the influence of others.
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For those who believe in God most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live so well that Death will tremble to take us. ~ Charles Bukowski
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FIVE TRAITS THAT SERIAL KILLERS HAVE IN COMMON
~ Serial killers tend to have lots of secrets, and research from an investigative unit at the FBI suggests that they have other common traits as well. Here are the top five common characteristics of serial killers.
PREDATORY BEHAVIOR
The most common serial killer trait is predatory behavior. While this behavior in animals is seen in the pursuit and capture of prey for foods, serial killers often stalk their victims or act on impulse when they see a potential victim.
Nicola Malizia, author of the 2017 Sociology Mind paper "Serial Killer: The Mechanism from Imagination to the Murder Phases," discusses how a serial killer will go through phases, starting with fantasizing about murder. With each fantasy, the act becomes more sexually charged until the killer forms a dependency on it. Eventually the fantasy isn't enough and the act is committed in reality.
After the first murder, the killer, according to Malizia, may form a ritual of stalking a victim, committing the murder and often keeping tokens or trophies from their victims. These can include photographs, jewelry and underwear.
In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, he would stalk his victims and then convince them to come back to his apartment, where he would drug them, kill them and then consume them — taking photos of the victims and keeping their bones.
LACK OF EMPATHY
Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal or fictional character. However, Malizia mentions in her paper that many serial killers grow up in homes that are unsuitable environments for promoting empathy.
"Physical, sexual and psychological abuse and emotional deprivation are some of the many traumas which the subject undergoes during childhood that establish the foundations for future criminal behavior," states Malizia in her paper.
Notable murderers like Dahmer and fellow Wisconsinite Ed Gein each had rough upbringings, which could have led them to become less empathetic.
Lack of empathy is common in people with personality disorders, such as Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Notorious killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy were diagnosed with APD. Dahmer was diagnosed with BPD, a disorder characterized by impulsivity, mood swings and problems forming interpersonal relationships — thus making it hard to feel empathetic. Those with the disorder typically have a total disregard for the feelings of others and show little to no remorse.
THE NEED TO CONTROL
Controlling and dominating their victims is a serial killer's primary motive. To them, murder is empowering. They are able to control what their victims do, how long they live and how they die.
Many serial killers feel sexual arousal when plotting and executing a murder. Rape is often involved in these instances because it is a way for the killer to feel in control. Outside of this situation, it is likely that a victim would reject sexual advances from the killer. But, when the killer is in control, they do not fear rejection.
DECEITFUL AND MANIPULATIVE
Other forms of control can include deceit and manipulation. Some killers, like Ted Bundy, manipulate their victims by pretending to have a disability or an injury requiring a cast. Once Bundy had manipulated his victims into a vulnerable situation, he would rape and murder them.
THE MACDONALD TRIAD
The MacDonald Triad focuses on three elements displayed during childhood as signs of a potential serial killer. The three are animal cruelty, bed wetting and fire setting, though more research is needed to prove that the MacDonald Triad is a precursor to serial murder.
These traits suggest the serial killer has a lack of self-control and empathy. Jeffrey Dahmer was known for killing several animals, including a jar of tadpoles after he had given them to his teacher. He would also dissect roadkill and bleach their bones. Ted Bundy would manipulate and kill pet store mice. And John Wayne Gacy allegedly set wild turkeys on fire with gasoline. Though not all serial killers exhibit this behavior, many have. ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/jeffrey-dahmer-and-other-serial-killers-have-these-5-traits-in-common?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333%40cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_221013_000000_V1&eid=ivy333%40cox.net
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Here is an interesting video on the differences between sociopaths and psychopaths. Psychopaths are definitely more scary, since they can fall in the “evil genius” category. Current thinking is that psychopaths are born that way (it’s genetic; their brain function differs from normal), while sociopaths are the product of child abuse.
Sociopathy vs Psychopathy - What's The Difference? - YouTube
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THE SPECTACULAR RISE OF ORNAMENTAL PLANTS
~ For thousands of years, plants have been cultivated not only for economic reasons, but to serve magic, lure immortal beings, and for aesthetic pleasure.
Aesthetic appeal may have played a role in the domestication of plants and animals, but the rise of pure ornamentals, that is, plants cultivated only for their aesthetic characteristics, is a much later development. Long after the emergence of urban civilization, ornamental and economic uses of plants seem not to have been distinguished. For example, the elegant gardens depicted in Egyptian tombs of the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1415 BCE) consisted, as far as we can tell, of multiple-use plants. Among those that have been identified are date palms, grapes, pomegranates, papyruses, and figs.
A few Egyptian tomb paintings show flowering plants that may have been pure ornamentals, but could just as well have been medicinals. Even blue water lilies, which are ubiquitous in Egyptian art, were more than symbolic and ornamental. The rhizomes of Nymphaea caerulea yield a powerful hallucinogen that the Egyptians probably used to make contact with the gods.
Agriculture and herding tend to impoverish environments biologically and to the senses. Pleasure gardens may be a reaction to the sensory and emotional impoverishment of overly instrumental, bleakly humanized environments. The Mesopotamian gardens for which we have plans were organized geometrically, which today may not seem the best remedy to visual poverty. However, for the ancients, geometric plantings would have recontextualized familiar plants and provided new experiences, among them a heightened sense of meaning and security. In Mesopotamia the geometric ordering of space was used to suggest an alternative to nature. Gardens, known as paradises, were walled spaces where divine order could be recreated. This order was mathematical.
We know that these mathematical spaces were sensuously enriched with displaced species and plant combinations unknown in the wild. There may also have been pruned, grafted, and trained plants. And, in time (after all, Mesopotamian civilization was more than 2,000 years old by the time of Homer), new varieties would have arisen in gardens, with or without encouragement from people.
From Mesopotamia the concept of the pure ornamental garden spread westward. Neither the Egyptians nor the Greeks seem to have added much to Mesopotamian and Persian ideas, although the Greeks, with their passion for the written word, left the first extensive records of ornamental plants.
The Romans enthusiastically took up ideas from the East. As early as the middle of the second century BCE Roman estates had pleasure gardens. During the time of the empire some of these gardens were geometric, probably modeled after Eastern originals, but others were informal, wild gardens. Ornamental plant materials included many kinds of trees and shrubs, as well as herbaceous perennials, including violets, narcissuses, convolvuluses, hyacinths, ferns, periwinkles, anemones, rockets, lilies, pimpernels, saffron, and ivies. Calendulas and poppies are the first annual ornamentals on record.
The earliest gardens that seem to have been intended primarily for pleasure were in Mesopotamia. The Gilgamesh epic, which refers to events in 2700 BCE, contains descriptions of what may have been ornamental gardens; however, the first unmistakable evidence of plants cultivated for pleasure is from Assyria. There, kings had hunting preserves and parklike tree plantations. Tiglath Pilesar I, who reigned about 1100 BCE, brought back cedars and box from lands he conquered. Other Assyrian kings left records of parks planted with palms, cypresses, and myrrh.
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We do not know what these parks looked like. The first nonutilitarian gardens that can be loosely reconstructed date from the sixth century BCE. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were created by Nebuchadnezzar, who, the story goes, built them for his Persian wife, who was homesick for the mountains of her childhood. Babylon was situated on a river plain. The terraced gardens, which covered three or four acres, were said to resemble a green mountain. The earliest records of the Hanging Gardens are by the Greek historians Diodorus and Strabo, but no remains have ever been found. However, remnants of Cyrus the Great’s (ca. 585-ca. 529 BCE) garden at Pasargadae still exist. It had trees and shrubs planted symmetrically in plots.
Records of Mesopotamian parks and gardens emphasize trees. Why trees rather than flowers? In the case of Cyrus the Great’s garden, only the remains of trees and shrubs have survived the centuries. Herbaceous plants, if they existed, have vanished. The Greeks, whose records we must rely on for much of our information about Mesopotamian gardens, were not horticulturally advanced, and may have been unduly impressed by the largest, most obvious plants. Still, trees were almost certainly important features of Mesopotamian gardens. Trees provide shade, a necessity in that part of the world, with its intense light and scorching heat.
In addition to their utilitarian value, many trees are architecturally pleasing, and have symbolic and social significance. Like other agricultural peoples, the Mesopotamians cleared land for crops and cut trees for wood. Near towns and cities, groves left uncut may have gradually disappeared because cattle, sheep, and goats grazed and trampled seedlings, allowing no new trees to grow. When forests are reduced to memories, surviving remnants may take on new meanings. Groves can become emblematic of the past, and sacred. They can also become indicators of wealth and worldly power.
An extreme and oddly prescient Roman garden was the parklike adjunct to Nero’s Golden House, built after the Great Fire of 64 CE, which destroyed most of the city of Rome. The Golden House had a pillared arcade 3,000 feet long and a vestibule large enough to accommodate a 120-foot-high statue of the emperor. The historian Tacitus, Nero’s near contemporary, wrote that the real wonder of the Golden House was not its “customary and commonplace luxuries like gold and jewels, but lawns and lakes and faked rusticity.” There were artificial woodlands, waterfalls, and an enormous pool “like a sea,” along with plowed fields, vineyard, pastures, and both wild and domesticated animals. Rome already had many gardens, but the Golden House was something new, a country villa set in the center of the city.
Nero inspired such loathing that after his death, the Golden House was dismantled and its countryside restored to city. The Golden House was a cruel and ill-fated expression of a deep human need better answered (if still inadequately) by urban parks, green belts, and other attempts to preserve or recreate countryside in the city.
The emergence of pure ornamentals in the West is poorly documented, but their early histories elsewhere are even more difficult to trace. The practice of cultivating plants for aesthetic pleasure seems to have arisen independently in at least four widely separated places: Mesopotamia, China, Mexico, and South America.
The Aztecs and other peoples of ancient Mexico had pleasure gardens, and by the time of the Spanish invasion, dahlias, zinnias, and two species of marigolds had been cultivated long enough to have become domesticated. Accounts of early Mexican pleasure gardens often emphasize fragrance. To enter the garden of Netzahualcoyotl, the poet king of Texcoco, was, as the king’s descendent Ixtilxochitl described, “like falling into a garden raining with aromatic tropical flowers.” Aztec poetry associates floral perfumes and drunkenness. Lyrics to an Aztec song read:
I inhale the perfume
and my soul becomes drunk.
I so long for the place of beauty
, the place of flowers, the place of my fulfillment.
With flowers my soul is made drunk.
The association of flowers with drunkenness is probably a literary device, but conceivably may reflect actual experience. The peoples of Mesoamerica were masters of mindaltering substances. The Aztecs and others used the pollen of maguey (the century plant, Agave americana) to produce dizziness. The flowers of at least one group of plants, the daturas, which figured prominently in Aztec medicine, have pollen and perfumes that cause intoxication.
Out of curiosity, I placed a bouquet of daturas near my bed and breathed their scent as I fell asleep. I had no unusual dreams, so I tried again by bringing a datura relative into my studio, a potted brugmansia, a South American shamanic plant with hanging trumpet-shaped blossoms. The glorious fragrance gave me one of the worst headaches I have ever experienced. That ended my investigations into intoxicating perfumes.
We know very little about Inca pleasure gardens. The 16th-century Peruvian chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a conquistador, recorded that before the conquest, “all the royal palaces had gardens and orchards for the Inca’s [king’s] recreation. They were planted with all sorts of gay and beautiful trees, beds of flowers, and fine and sweet-smelling herbs.”
Several other early accounts confirm the existence of Inca pleasure gardens, but as we might expect, the chroniclers were more interested in precious metals than in flowers. Consequently we know less about the ornamental plants that the Incas cultivated than about an assemblage of artificial plants fashioned out of gold and silver in the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. The assemblage included replicas of herbs, flowers, grains, and trees. Sculptures of useful plants, such as corn and quinoa, were mixed with flowers, lizards, and butterflies.
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By the Warring States period (481–221 BCE), Chinese magicians and healers had evolved a kind of garden intended to entice spirits. Emperor Han Wu-ti (141–86 BCE) had two lakes built, each with replicas of the legendary islands of the immortals. The purpose of these artificial islands was to lure immortal beings and gain their secrets for the emperor.
Only an emperor could carry things so far. Already during Han Wu-ti’s reign parts of China were densely populated, arable land was in short supply, and a land use ethic had evolved that discouraged the acquisition of large estates for nonutilitarian purposes except by the emperor. The government confiscated huge game parks belonging to certain powerful officials and gave the land to the poor. Sometimes the government confiscated gardens as well. The Han Chinese evidently saw proto-ornamentals and the gardens where they grew as magical and healing in some circumstances, as status symbols in others, and in yet others as expressions of greed. Today there is a remarkably similar range of reactions to ornamentals and ornamental gardens in the West.
Literary evidence suggests that pure ornamentals existed by the Six Dynasties period (222-598 CE). Tao Yuan-ming (365-427 CE), who gave up a secure and high-paying government position because he felt that life was too short for the bowing and scraping necessary for such success, associated garden flowers with poetry and song. “I want not wealth. I want not power. Heaven is beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright hours as they pass, in my garden among my flowers.”
Many of today’s ornamentals began as multiple-use plants. Camellias were first cultivated for oil, peonies for medicine, lotuses for food, and delphiniums as love potions and to control lice. In the days before calendars, Japanese farmers brought into cultivation Iris ensata, the forerunner of today’s highly bred Japanese irises, because it bloomed at the time when rice had to be transplanted from seed beds to paddies.
The rose illustrates how circuitous the path to purely ornamental status can be. The Greeks and Egyptians grew roses as medicinal plants and for perfumes and wreaths. The ancients took wreaths quite seriously. They were worn as badges of honor and signs of rank, with proper use strictly enforced. Pliny tells of a man who was jailed for stepping out onto the balcony of his home wearing an inappropriate wreath of roses.
The first clear evidence of roses used as pure ornamentals is Roman. Murals at Pompeii show pleasure gardens with roses, and Pliny evaluated several different varieties for their aesthetic qualities. Yet even among the Romans roses may have been grown less for ornament than for use in wreaths, medicine, perfumes, or for their petals, which were scattered in the paths of dignitaries in the streets.
Flowers, especially roses, figured in Rome’s decay. Nero’s Golden House had rooms with paneled ceilings that slid open so that slaves, working overhead, could sprinkle guests with perfumes and petals. The highlight of Emperor Elagabalus’s brief reign was a party at which so many flowers were dumped on guests that several died of suffocation.
Because of associations with the bad old days, roses fell out of favor among Christians in Western Europe after the collapse of Rome. But roses continued to be cultivated for medicinal purposes and eventually became emblematic of the Virgin Mary, which restored the plant’s prestige. As late as the 18th century a third of all herbal remedies called for roses. Except for the vitamin C in remedies made from rose hips, the benefits were probably a matter of suggestion. Only in the last few centuries have most roses become purely ornamental.
In gardens, species that had never met in the wild were juxtaposed. Wind and insects did the hybridizing and gardeners did the selection. Well before the discovery of plant sexuality, some ornamentals had become remarkably refined. John Creech, former director of the U.S. National Arboretum and an authority on azaleas, wrote that “one can only be awed by the sophisticated level of azalea culture that existed [in seventeenth-century Japan]…. It is doubtful that there are any objectives pursued by modern azalea breeders that were not taken into consideration by the pioneer azalea developers, who produced selections that have not been duplicated since.” Seventeenth-century chrysanthemums, tulips, roses, and camellias displayed comparable accomplishments.
Taste in plants changes. Cyclamens with bizarre crests were popular in 18th-century Europe. Today these flowers are grown by only a few specialists. In Japan, petal-less azaleas consisting mostly of stamens were considered extremely elegant. Chinese and Japanese gardeners took chrysanthemums to heights of eccentricity, developing wilted-looking flowers and ones that resembled mops or shredded coconut.
Different eras prefer different novelties. The Victorians were wildly enthusiastic about pelargoniums, newly arrived from South Africa, and fuchsias, from Central and South America. Kao Lin, a 15th-century Chinese cataloger of peonies, mentioned a cultivar named ‘Being Black Purple,’ which he compares to a black mallow, indicating an interest in black flowers. European fascination with black did not arise until two centuries later. Green flowers have never appealed to more than a minority. Kao Lin mentions peonies with green markings, but by his time, appreciation of green cymbidiums was already well established among the literati. In 17th-century Europe some tulips had green hearts or streaks, but it was not until the 18th century that a few British florists began deliberately selecting for green auriculas.
Preferences for particular patterns and forms also vary greatly. Striped camellias were popular in Japan, and striped dianthuses and tulips became fashionable in Europe, but nothing comparable seems to have developed in China, where selfs were favored. The Ottoman Turks preferred tulips with slender, pointed petals, while Europeans preferred broad, rounded petals. Long-cultivated lowers such as peonies, roses, and chrysanthemums increased in size in both Europe and China, but as long ago as the 17th century Chu Ta respectfully painted modestly sized chrysanthemums. Europeans, Chinese, and Aztecs favored very full doubles, but in Japan many gardeners preferred semi-doubles or singles. Aesthetic preferences among plants bear comparison to those in painting and sculpture. Some preferences are widely shared, but many belong to particular times and places.
Auricula, related to primrose
In light of the refinement of 18th-century ornamentals such as auriculas, tulips, and ranunculi, why weren’t they recognized as art? More than two centuries earlier Shakespeare in “The Winter’s Tale” had reflected on a streaked gillyvor, or carnation, as representing “an art which does mend nature — change it rather — but the art itself is nature.” Here the word “art” means “skill” or “craft” rather than fine art. Still, Shakespeare apparently understood certain cultivated plants as shaped by human choices. This was a major step toward considering some plants as fine art, because Europeans believed that art was a distinctively human activity (assisted, perhaps, by divine inspiration.)
The idea that art is uniquely human is not universal. The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans who practiced highly sophisticated ornamental horticulture, believed that art arose from nature, and attributed the aesthetic and philosophical qualities of art to natural objects. In China, scholars collected remarkable stones and gnarled roots and displayed them as sculpture. These found natural objects were associated with landscape painting, which, along with calligraphy, occupied the pinnacle of the visual arts.
In 1694 Rudolph Camerarius, a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Tübingen, proved that plants reproduce sexually. This made plant breeding possible and would eventually draw attention to the role that humans played in shaping new kinds. However, in itself, an understanding of plant sexuality did not lead to recognition of plants as fine art. Part of the reason was that for at least another century, plant sexuality remained controversial. Also, during this time ornamental plant breeding became associated with the lower classes. However, the single greatest obstacle in the West to recognizing plant breeding as an art was not class prejudice or the scandal of plant sexuality, but the belief that art and nature are separate.
Humankind’s absolutely singular and privileged place in the universe became a key Christian tenet, reinforced by borrowings from Greek philosophy. Aesthetic theory echoed church doctrine by arguing that art arose from the human mind or spirit and was therefore outside nature and superior to it. “Artistic beauty,” wrote Hegel, “stands higher than nature. For the beauty of art is the beauty that is born… of the mind… God is more honored by what mind does or makes than by the productions or formations of nature” (italics Hegel’s).
Not all philosophers were so adamant. Kant thought that art and nature are separate but that the line between them is not always clear. In “Critique of Judgment” he distinguishes between the by aesthetic qualities of nature and the aesthetic qualities of fine art, but identifies artistic genius with nature. In addition, Kant includes landscape gardening among the fine arts, which means that living plants can be components of art.
Kant did not go so far as to recognize particular ornamental plants as works of art. To have done so would have risked intellectual heresy. As if to reassure his peers that he was no flaming radical, he describes flowers as “free beauties of nature,” using roses as his prime examples.His choice of roses rather than water lilies, say, is telling. By Kant’s time more than 200 varieties of roses were being cultivated in Europe, many of them highly domesticated. Yet he identifies roses as neither wild nor cultivated. This is a striking omission for a claim that roses represent nature’s beauty.
By lumping wild and domesticated roses together as exemplars of nature, Kant left undisturbed traditional beliefs that cultivated plants are works of God created when the world began and unchanged ever since. His conveniently generalized rose maintained crucial elements of the ancient dualism that separated man from nature and art from life. Challenge to that dualism was to come less from philosophy than from science, with a little help from the arts. ~
Garden of the House of the Golden Bbracelets, Pompeii
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/rise-ornamental-plants-and-pleasure-gardens/
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“A PERSON OF FAITH” AND “A PERSON OF DEPTH” (repost)
Today I saw the first phrase somewhere, and thought, with some dismay, that it leaves me no alternative except to call myself a “person of no faith” — which sounds negative in the extreme. It implies no faith in anything, no core values, no ability to love arguably to the point of worship, no deep emotional experiences, no emotional sensitivity, no ability to appreciate Mozart’s Requiem, say, just because it’s “sacred music.” Frequently there is also the assumption that I must be overly rationalistic as opposed to intuitive, and that I can’t even imagine what it feels like to believe in an all-powerful deity who allegedly personally loves you and guides your every step (but will send you to hell should you stray from mother church).
The memory of Rabbi F’s remark, “I don’t see how an atheist could enjoy a poem” also flashed back. I also remember being called “weak-minded,” and when I asked for an explanation, it was an accusation that I think only with my brain (I presume it meant “no intuition”). There has also been an accusation of cowardice, since it takes courage to make the “leap of faith” — as if most believers took a brave, conscious leap of faith rather than being born into their religion.
The courage it took to leave an oppressive totalitarian church was not something my accuser was willing to consider, nor the courage to assert that this one life is all we have — something that goes against the kind of wishful thinking that’s closest to the heart.
Fortunately this morning I also quickly regained my peace of mind. I didn’t have to call myself “a person of no faith.” Instead, I would describe myself as “a person of depth.”
What I value about myself is my ability to go into any subject in depth. In part it’s a function of education: I am grateful to all the teachers who pointed out the complexity of anything we examine closely (as Nietzsche said, “an infinity opens up”). And I am glad that circumstances have exposed me to smart people who disagreed with me, and thus forced me to re-think and re-define my views. Coming to a different culture, and one so richly diverse at that, was also an enlarging experience bar none.
Ultimately, however, I owe most of my re-thinking to leaving Catholicism. It’s somewhat funny that I arrived at the idea of the social contract by myself all over again, but I suspect I had to — it was much more powerful that way than if I had merely read about.
I am not trying to create a dichotomy between a “person of faith” and a “person of depth.” Of course a believer can also think and experience life in a complex manner. One such person whom I had a pleasure to talk with was an ex-Jesuit priest I knew in Warsaw. He was not an atheist and tried to see the good side of religion in spite of his personal history of being ex-communicated and persecuted at first. And I see the seriousness of those who have tried to imagine the kind of god who is not simply a big parent in the sky. I certainly don’t deny depth to them.
To me, the primary dimension is depth. It’s not opposed to faith. Rather, depth requires the courage to question anything, and to go wherever this questioning may take you.
“SPIRITUAL NO MORE”: TO HEAVEN AND BEYOND (repost)
The last time I set foot in a New Age bookstore I happened to be in Encinitas, that Mecca of New Age eclectic esoterica. In one of the several Lotus-something bookstores, I saw the title “To Heaven and Beyond.” AND BEYOND — as in Bed, Bath, and Beyond, a realm beyond mere bedrooms and bathrooms, new horizons that open as you part the shower curtain.
“To heaven and BEYOND.” Heaven is not enough any more. Heaven is so yesterday!
I stood there with a smile on my face – and suddenly the title of my third book came to me. You see, years ago I had an unforgettable dream of trying to save the manuscripts of my three wisdom books from the fire — then realized they were charred beyond salvaging and I’d have to re-create them. The title of the first one was The Serpent and the Dove (“Be ye as subtle as the serpent and gentle as the dove”).
It took me many years after the dream to “see” the titles of the other two books. The title of the second book was to be Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet. The third book remained a puzzle until the doors of perception were cleansed that evening in Encinitas and I saw it: Spiritual No More.
And the weight I didn’t even know I was carrying fell off me, and a feeling of great joy enveloped me as I ascended into clarity.
Now I can agree with Mary Oliver’s “You don’t have to be good” if I translate it into “You don’t have to be spiritual.”
Furthermore, I’d like to translate “what the animal of your body loves doing” to “what your mind loves doing.” If my mind is happy, my body is also happy.
I had this thought before, but now the realization was complete: instead of attending lectures on emptiness, chanting, meditation classes and the like (all wonderful for those who find nourishment in those activities), I needed to spend more of my time doing what I loved doing. Insights tend to have a stunning simplicity. Mine was: FORGET “SPIRITUALITY.” JUST DO WHAT YOU LOVE DOING.
Well, of course, a friend indulgently smiled. That stuff is for people who still haven’t figured out what to do with their lives. And I did, quite a while back, but I kept having crises and doubting my vocation.
I love having insights, especially life-changing paradigm shifts. Imagine — released from having to attend lectures on emptiness! No more chanting, unless seized by a sudden nostalgia for those vibrations setting up an odd tingling in my nose . . . No more the stench of incense, which I always hated, going back to my Catholic childhood. No more twangy music, no more wind chimes jangling my nerves.
The energy and sense of effortless accomplishment that comes from doing what you love, and afterwards, blissfully tired, falling asleep smiling to yourself — it’s a magnificent surprise. It’s “beyond heaven,” that dull place with nothing to do. It’s the bliss of knowing, pardon the trite expression, that you are on the right path.
You can imagine people’s consternation when they’d say to me — out of habit, I suspect — “I'm a spiritual seeker,” and I would calmly reply, “I'm not.”
I'm talking about the courage to drop the cliché. It’s OK NOT to be a spiritual seeker, to be on a perpetual quest. Perhaps you’ve already found a place where you feel at home and do your best work. That place won’t necessarily remain the same for the rest of your life, no. But life will evolve as it will, without seeking aid from “spirit guides.” If anything, that’s trying to be too controlling. The unconscious does its best work without such meddling. Just wait.
All my “spiritual” thrashing around — normally described as “seeking” or “quest” — was like staying in a relationship with the wrong person. And there is a terrific difference between a fleeing infatuation and being in love with the right person.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL’S “SPIRITUAL PRACTICE”
Some people are likely to ask, “But isn’t writing your spiritual practice?” No. To me writing is writing. It’s not a ritual. It’s not the least bit like prayer (at least as I’ve experienced prayer — practically the opposite of writing, which wells up from the unconscious, and progresses by a “stairway of surprise,” as Dickinson put it).
For me writing is writing, just as a tree is a tree. How magnificent to see a tree as a tree, in its beautiful tree-ness, and not a “manifestation of the Spirit.” I see only the tree and the wind in the leaves, and love the tree as a tree and the wind as wind.
Others are welcome to see the tree as the Spirit, or Gaia, or the more archaic the Earth Goddess, or Intelligent Design. “It’s a free country,” as people in Milwaukee were always telling me (oh Milwaukee, the city where I learned to say “It’s a free country,” as well as quickly mastered all the “bad words” in English).
From a poem of mine:
The same moon moved between
darkness and light-wounded clouds,
winter’s hungry Wolf Moon,
adding phantom beauty to beauty.
“That is all,” the master said.
That is all but it is splendid.”
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I don’t have any special time set aside for writing. It’s not a practice – it’s writing. I write whenever quiet opens up and thoughts arise like the flight of an owl. Non-fiction prose is effortless, inspiration abundant.
Joseph Campbell was once asked, “What kind of spiritual practice do you have?” He replied, “I underline in pencil sentences in a book.” Now that brings a big smile to my face. Yes, that’s my “spiritual practice” too.
To accompany these musings, I chose my heart geode — it could also be called a womb geode. We carry on little conversations, the geode and I. “Amethyst” means “not intoxicated.” In the past, my chief intoxication has been delusional, depressive thinking. Amethyst, a philosopher’s stone, keeps me cool-headed. How can I sweat the small stuff with such beauty near me showing me what’s really important?
Crystals. Geodes. This may sounds like a throwback “spirituality.” But that’s the part of me that has always worshiped beauty. Creating and sharing beauty is at the center of my vocation. Beauty for the sake of sheer delight in beauty — not beauty as “spirit” or “pathway to the divine.” Why try to put unreal labels on the real?
Tree as tree, amethyst as amethyst. A crystal I can endow with a personal meaning, but above all a crystal whose physical structure is more profound that any theology. All actual beauty is more profound than any pathetic, world-rejecting theology (and they all reject the world for the “beyond,” don’t they?).
A friend observed, “So you too are a crystal-waving rationalist. Welcome to the sisterhood.”
At last I belong.
MILOSZ’S METAPHYSICAL TORMENTS interest me because they show how a brilliant man who’s witnessed the atrocities of the twentieth century still attempts to believe in god, but tries to make the concept of a benevolent deity fit in with the modern worldview -- hence the idea that god cannot violate the laws of nature. Forget walking on water, or the sun standing still. The god of the educated elite is not omnipotent, and yet he is not like the pagan gods, each with a limited power. With some metaphysical acrobatics, one can still (though just barely, in my opinion) argue that god exists. Rabbi Kushner tries to accomplish this feat in “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
Milosz quoting Joseph Czapski: “The truth most difficult to accept (Simone Weil) is that the world is ruled ONLY BY CHANCE (emphasis in the original), that God has no power over it. His power, his help is of another dimension. Providence, yes, but it exists only when it sends both happiness and misfortune and a man REALLY living in God receives the blows and the happiness IN THE SAME MANNER as he receives Grace.”
This made me recall the newspaper photo of the mother whose daughter was raped and killed near Escondido, near a lake where she loved to run. The face of that mother of a murdered child made me understand the nature of ultimate pain much better than any religious painting. I don’t know if a mother can ever recover from this kind of trauma. I don’t think anyone would dare approach her with the advice that she accept this tragedy with the same gratitude she would feel if instead she experienced some marvelous good luck. Yes, that perhaps would be ideal, but I am yet to meet anyone who, when struck by misfortune, smiles a radiant smile and says a prayer of thanks.
Instead of expecting the superhuman, we need to understand that people who are suffering need EMPATHY. They need arms around them. Warm human arms, not moralizing, not metaphysics. They need the “milk of human kindness.” Just hug them.
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GREEN BANANAS [OR, MORE ACCURATELY, RESISTANT STARCH] FOUND TO REDUCE CANCER BY OVER 50%
~ A trial in people with high hereditary risk of a wide range of cancers has shown a major preventive effect from resistant starch, found in a range of foods such as oats and slightly green bananas. It can also be found in breakfast cereal, cooked and cooled pasta and rice, peas and beans.
The international trial — known as CAPP2 – involved almost 1000 patients with Lynch syndrome from around the world and revealed that a regular dose of resistant starch, also known as fermentable fibre, taken for an average of two years, did not affect cancers in the bowel but did reduce cancers in other parts of the body by more than half. This effect was particularly pronounced for upper gastrointestinal cancers including esophageal, gastric, biliary tract, pancreatic and duodenum cancers.
The astonishing effect was seen to last for 10 years after stopping taking the supplement.
The study, led by experts at the Universities of Newcastle and Leeds, published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, is a planned double blind 10 year follow–up, supplemented with comprehensive national cancer registry data for up to 20 years in 369 of the participants.
Previous research published as part of the same trial, revealed that aspirin reduced cancer of the large bowel by 50%.
“We found that resistant starch reduces a range of cancers by over 60%. The effect was most obvious in the upper part of the gut,” explained Professor John Mathers, professor of Human Nutrition at Newcastle University. “This is important as cancers of the upper GI tract are difficult to diagnose and often are not caught early on.
“Resistant starch can be taken as a powder supplement and is found naturally in peas, beans, oats and other starchy foods. The dose used in the trial is equivalent to eating a daily banana; before they become too ripe and soft, the starch in bananas resists breakdown and reaches the bowel where it can change the type of bacteria that live there.
“Resistant starch is a type of carbohydrate that isn’t digested in your small intestine, instead it ferments in your large intestine, feeding beneficial gut bacteria – it acts in effect like dietary fiber in your digestive system. This type of starch has several health benefits and fewer calories than regular starch. We think that resistant starch may reduce cancer development by changing the bacterial metabolism of bile acids and to reduce those types of bile acids that can damage our DNA and eventually cause cancer. However, this needs further research.” ~
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/green-bananas-found-to-reduce-cancers-by-over-50
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Lynch syndrome, also known as hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), is the most common cause of hereditary colorectal (colon) cancer. People with Lynch syndrome are more likely to get colorectal cancer and other cancers, and at a younger age (before 50). Not everyone with Lynch syndrome will inevitably develop cancer. Your risk depends, in part, on which of the five Lynch syndrome-responsible genes has the inherited genetic defect and the types of cancer that have been diagnosed throughout your family's medical history.
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BENEFITS OF AFTERNOON AND EVENING EXERCISE FOR INSULIN RESISTANCE
~ From the group that wore activity monitors, the researchers whittled down the participant pool to 775 participants with an average age of 56. The group makeup was 42% male and 58% female, with an average BMI of 26.2.
Through examining data from the activity monitors, the researchers divided up the daily periods into three segments: 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (morning), 12:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. (afternoon); and 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. (evening). They excluded the hours from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.
For each of the 6-hour periods, the researchers looked at the different levels of activity recorded by the heart rate monitors.
After analyzing the data collected, the researchers did not find a link between breaks in sedentary activity and reduced insulin resistance. However, they did find an association between insulin resistance and the time of day the participants performed moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, as recorded by the activity monitors.
The findings suggest that moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in the afternoon led to an 18% reduction in insulin resistance, and the same types of activity in the evening were linked to a 25% reduction — in comparison to physical activity spread throughout the day.
They found no difference in MVPA [moderate-to-vigorous physical activity] and reduced insulin resistance in the morning segment of the data.
The researchers also examined the liver fat captured in the MRI scans and noted that the number of breaks in sedentary time did not impact liver fat content.
“Further studies should assess whether timing of physical activity is indeed important for the occurrence of type 2 diabetes,” the authors wrote.
“It is certainly timely to investigate chronobiological effects of exercise,” said Dr. Sagner. “Timing of exercise is a relatively unexplored field in human studies and needs more studies.”
Dr. Sagner noted a weakness of the study being the limited 4-day window in which the participants were monitored and said more research is needed “if certain types of activity provide more health benefits when done during specific times of the day.” ~
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/type-2-diabetes-exercise-timing-to-reduce-insulin-resistance#Benefits-of-afternoon-or-eveningexercise
Oriana: AND TIME-RESTRICTED EATING
Scientists who specialize in chronobiology have been for many years now that when you eat if more important than what you eat.
Insulin resistance if highest in the morning — the time of highest cortisol, epinephrine, growth hormone and glucagon levels. One way around it is fasting. No, you’re not supposed to be eating when cortisol is really high (please note that this advice is for NON-DIABETICS).
Among its other functions, glucagon can turn stored triglycerides (i.e. body fat) into glucose.
I find strict fasting a tad unpleasant, so I developed what I call a “minimalist breakfast.” It’s not low-calorie food, but rather the opposite. I have a small amount of goat cheese for protein and fat, a tablespoon of almond butter for healthy plant-derived fat, and a small amount of very dark chocolate. I was startled to discover how satisfying it was — especially the amount of energy I enjoyed, contrary to my initial expectations.
It turns out that when you fast during daylight, your body produces a neuropeptide called OREXIN-A, which makes you more alert.
A few months ago I thought I’d experiment with the full type of breakfast I used to have. I ended up feeling bloated and just “not feeling good” in general. I’ve never had a full breakfast since. The more minimalist my breakfast, the better I feel in the morning -- one of the greatest surprises of my life, after decades of being brainwashed with the idea that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." In a way, it is -- your health benefits if you don't eat it.
When it comes to exercise, it seems that it’s best to eat before exercise, not after. Again, I am not addressing a special group such as muscle builders. My idea of activity is gardening, and I don’t mean pushing a heavy lawnmower either. Yes, there are advantages to vigorous workouts, but taking an evening walk is more my speed. (I used to really love my post-dinner sunset walks — now I eat later, and walk near bedtime — my philosophy is “whatever works!”)
For some people fasting is very easy, and they can delay their mid-day meal to some point in the afternoon — and are comfortable with that one single meal a day. I realize how contrary this is to what we’ve been previously told: small, frequent meals. Now we’re told that the worst thing is constant snacking — that two or even just one meal a day will result in better health (“intermittent fasting”).
Mice who were fed only once a day, regardless of calorie intake and nutritional composition, were the healthiest and lived longest. https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/longer-daily-fasting-times-improve-health-and-longevity-mice
If this holds for humans, and there is reason to believe it does, then all the advice on what to eat seems ludicrous considering that what matters most is WHEN we eat, i.e. the duration of fasting.
~ During fasting, the body uses up glucose and glycogen, then turns to energy reserves stored in fat. This stored energy is released in the form of chemicals called ketones. These chemicals help cells—especially brain cells—keep working at full capacity. Some researchers think that because ketones are a more efficient energy source than glucose, they may protect against aging-related decline in the central nervous system that might cause dementia and other disorders.
Ketones also may inhibit the development of cancer because malignant cells cannot effectively obtain energy from ketones. In addition, studies show that ketones may help protect against inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. Ketones also reduce the level of insulin in the blood, which could protect against type 2 diabetes. ~ https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/calorie-restriction-and-fasting-diets-what-do-we-know#fasting
Oriana:
Considering that many of us are sedentary, and also that we do our best mental work in the morning, the benefits of morning fasting seem obvious. But always, always we need to listen closely to our bodies. I discovered that, contrary to my expectation, I am more alert in the morning if I at least “semi-fast,” i.e. eat a very light breakfast. But a young and physically active person may function differently.
I imagine a future when we are routinely genetically tested and also have access to personalized nutritional guidance. Until then, we can profit from whatever crumbs of research we may find. Ketones protect from heart disease and brain diseases? Fantastic! A grain-free diet lowers inflammation and helps prevent autoimmune condition? Wonderful! Or does anyone prefer to take expensive drugs with nasty side effects?
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NOSE PICKING COULD INCREASE RISK OF DEMENTIA
~ Griffith University researchers have demonstrated that a bacteria can travel through the olfactory nerve in the nose and into the brain in mice, where it creates markers that are a tell-tale sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, showed that Chlamydia pneumoniae used the nerve extending between the nasal cavity and the brain as an invasion path to invade the central nervous system. The cells in the brain then responded by depositing amyloid beta protein which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.
Professor James St John, Head of the Clem Jones Centre for Neurobiology and Stem Cell Research, is a co-author of the world first research.
“We’re the first to show that Chlamydia pneumoniae can go directly up the nose and into the brain where it can set off pathologies that look like Alzheimer’s disease,” Professor St John said. “We saw this happen in a mouse model, and the evidence is potentially scary for humans as well.”
The olfactory nerve in the nose is directly exposed to air and offers a short pathway to the brain, one which bypasses the blood-brain barrier. It’s a route that viruses and bacteria have sniffed out as an easy one into the brain.
The team at the Centre is already planning the next phase of research and aim to prove the same pathway exists in humans.
“We need to do this study in humans and confirm whether the same pathway operates in the same way. It’s research that has been proposed by many people, but not yet completed. What we do know is that these same bacteria are present in humans, but we haven’t worked out how they get there.”
bacterium Chlamydia
There are some simple steps to look after the lining of your nose that Professor St John suggests people can take now if they want to lower their risk of potentially developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
“Picking your nose and plucking the hairs from your nose are not a good idea”,” he said.
“We don’t want to damage the inside of our nose and picking and plucking can do that.
“If you damage the lining of the nose, you can increase how many bacteria can go up into your brain”, he said.
Smell tests may also have potential as detectors for Alzheimer’s and dementia says Professor St John, as loss of sense of smell is an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. He suggests smell tests from when a person turns 60 years old could be beneficial as an early detector.
“Once you get over 65 years old, your risk factor goes right up, but we’re looking at other causes as well, because it’s not just age—it is environmental exposure as well. And we think that bacteria and viruses are critical.”
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/new-research-suggests-nose-picking-could-increase-risk-for-alzheimer-s-and-dementia
PROTEIN DERIVED FROM BANANAS COULD PREVENT CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS
~ H84T-BanLec is derived from a lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein) isolated from banana fruit. It accomplishes its remarkable viral-blocking abilities by binding to high-mannose glycans, polysaccharides that are present on the surface of the viruses, but only very rarely on normal healthy human cells. After binding, the virus cannot enter cells to infect them.
Using atomic force microscopy and related methods, the team confirmed that H84T develops multiple strong bonds with the spike protein, which, said Markovitz, probably explains why it’s hard for a coronavirus to be resistant to the lectin.
Despite their anti-viral potential, lectins have traditionally been avoided as possible therapies because they are proteins that can stimulate the immune system in a potentially harmful way, explains Markovitz. However, H84T-BanLec has been modified to remove this effect and showed no detrimental effects in the animal models.
While several treatments for COVID-19 currently exist, including remdesivir, Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies, they have varied levels of effectiveness, side effects and ease of use and many have proven less effective as SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve.
H84T-BanLec holds unique promise, according to the team, because it is effective against all coronavirus variants as well as influenza viruses. Markovitz and the team hope to see the therapy take the more difficult step from animal models to testing in humans. The team envisions a nasal spray or drops that can be used to prevent or treat coronavirus and influenza infections in seasonal and pandemic situations. They also hope to examine using H84T-BanLec against cancer—because cancer cells, like viruses, also have high mannose glycans on their surfaces. ~
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/banana-protein-antiviral-is-a-silver-bullet-against-all-known-coronaviruses-and-influenza
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A MUSHROOM A DAY KEEPS CANCER AWAY: ERGOTHIONEINE
Regular mushroom consumption (approximately 1 button mushroom per day) has been associated with a 64% decrease in the risk of breast cancer (this common mushroom variety is best used cooked, rather than raw, because it contains the toxin, agaritine, which is reduced with cooking).
The best news about mushrooms is a powerful micronutrient called ergothioneine. Ergothioneine is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory which mushrooms have in very high concentrations. Cooking actually releases this powerful nutrient from the mushroom cells. Mushrooms also have high levels of polyphenols that give them a higher antioxidant level than green pepper and zucchini.
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ending on beauty and wisdom:
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
~ W.S. Merwin, Berryman
(photo below: James Eret)
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