There is no review here per see, it's just 45 minutes of animated infographics related to the rise and fall of empires and where we are "hypothetically" right now globally.
There is a saying "Those that don't learn from history are set to repeat its mistakes." This said, there is a certain amount of comfort in knowing something outside of this video: Throughout the history of all the empires that have risen and fallen, real-time living standards have only gotten better.
That may mean we all have more to lose in the final reckoning. However, everybody in the wealthy west and the wealthy far east should also know it. That may also mean that no one wants to countenance a third world war.
Today is a contemplative day. Autumn is pretty much here. You can smell it and feel it (in my case it's more the sensation than the smell as my sense of smell is minimal and reserved in the main for sulphurous or rank smells like rotting dead animals). With the recent rain, all the leaves the trees didn't want but couldn't expend resources getting rid of have fallen, the light has changed, the temperature has dropped, the fields are reaped, straw and hay bailed, and the hedgerows have tried to ripen what little fruit there is. If it is a cold winter, it's going to be tough out there for the critters. Sloes are small, blackberries not so numerous, Haws only in numbers near water sources that didn't dry out, the same for Rowan, Yellow plums, and Cherries. There is very little mast, not a lot of acorns and so on and so forth.
It's odd, I am almost looking forward to the new season in spite of the fact that I really don't like the dark late afternoons and mornings that follow Autumn through winter.
And on that frankly miserable rumination I shall leave you to it.
Optimising attention, insight, concentration, Buddah. Modal
confusion, the having mode & being mode, and how they have been hijacked in
many ways by the attention economy latterly, and previously and currently by
marketers. The episodes also cover; cognitive unison and meditation. The
cognitive understanding of the processes as well as the spiritual/ephemeral
(bad words, but the best we have). There is also some really good descriptive
language on the techniques for mediation from a psychophysiological perspective.
Or put another way: if you struggle to understand the mechanics of meditation
and the point of it, you will find some understanding here, and in doing so
will, if you so wish be able to engage with the process without thinking those immortal
words to yourself “What the fuck am I doing.”
These two episodes really need to be seen back-to-back and a
few times. There is a great deal of information here. Personally, I need to go
back and watch them all over again one after the other. I have had at least
three weeks when fitting in time for these videos has been lacking, due to a myriad of reasons.
The reason
for watching these episodes back-to-back is that they are actually easier to
digest as a whole, rather than as two separate entities. And clearly, once you have
a good grasp of the concepts, mechanics and structure, you will be better
prepared for the next episode which covers consciousness.
A fascinating hour and twenty minutes that not one word is heard about in the mainstream/legacy media. There is real hope that the Middle East which I have never heard a good word about in my fifty-odd years of watching the news, is on the verge of widespread peace.
Let's hope that they are delusional and wrong, as they hope they are too. If they aren't, then the last three to six years would be nothing compared to what could materialise at the upper end of the spectrum, and even the better end of the spectrum is pretty terrible. And that the pretty terrible aspect is already baked in, because of the previous two years is very disconcerting.
This is an uncomfortable watch, and you sit there thinking "naaa ya wrong, you're going too far, that won't happen." The problem being you have two expert observers with years of experience telling you stuff you want to be confined to the make-believe of dystopian movies. You decide what you think, and in the future we will have the observation data that will bare out what is said or allow us a look back and think "thank fuck they were wrong."
