Executive Summary

• Despite attempts to distract us, the systemic rot is accelerating
• Why an approaching painful reset is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ at this point
• The big step I’ve just taken in my own planning
• An opportunity for a few interested others to join me

If you have not yet read Part 1: Bubbles Are Brutal, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

I am personally and locally optimistic, but globally pessimistic.  I can trust individuals and small groups, but I absolutely distrust every large institution, political party, and system in operation.  There’s a mass beyond which flexible, creative thinking just cannot operate.

The larger the group, the more prone it will be to magical thinking, hoaxes and myths.   Also, the larger the group the more resistant it will be to adjusting to new information, no matter how compelling.

It’s the difference between the AMA supporting the ‘food pyramid’ and your personal doctor recommending a low carb diet because they are aware of the metabolic disaster that the food pyramid actually represents.

Which means I am in a weird state of existence.  Maybe you are too.  I’m very happy with my own life, but extremely worried about everybody and everything else, right down to the disappearing insects.

These days, being aware and well-read is demoralizing.  The more you learn the more everything seems ready to crumble.  Reading the news has become an intensely emotional project.

The trends appear to be worsening.  There are more ecological disasters unfolding, more social unrest, a worsening wealth gap, less trust, increased mortality and more anxiety.

Small things can seem okay – your garden, your personal relationships, the exciting things a few small groups might be doing, whereas everything large seems hopeless, and unsalvageable.

Politics are frightful, corporations are mostly running rackets, universities are charging more for a product that is increasingly worthless, and because of all this people are anxious and fractured.  Institutional decay and a loss of public trust is a late-stage marker of a civilization in decline.

The elites are unable to grasp their role in perpetrating and perpetuating the many frauds and swindles that destroy the lives of so many and erode the rest.