Relationships: the Path to Contentment in Troubled Times

What I realized at a birthday party for my 95-year-old mother-in-law.

Steven Yates

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Photo by 𝔥𝔦𝔩𝔩𝔞𝔯𝔶 𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔱𝔞 on Unsplash

We’re in troubled times, and they could become tumultuous in the near future.

Just yesterday I read about the skyrocketing national debt, now over $35 trillion — a number that would have made sensible people gasp back in the 1990s when it was “just” $6 trillion!

If you could create a stack of $1 trillion one-dollar bills, the stack’s height would reach 67,866 miles, or about a quarter of the distance to the moon.

The debt is getting higher every day. Neither major political party (or its leading candidate) has even a hint what to do about it, and it’s likely that if they acted by cutting off the financialization spigot, the result would be immediate economic depression and political upheaval: something the globe’s real ruling class doesn’t want.

Speaking of whom … how sure can we be that the psychopaths and idiots who man (or woman) the world’s capitols won’t blunder their way into a third world war before the debt bubble bursts on its own and brings the house down with a thundering crash.

Thought: do we have any business catastrophizing the matter because bread and eggs cost more this year than they did…

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Steven Yates
Steven Yates

Written by Steven Yates

I am the author of What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory. I write about philosophy (especially the Stoics), health and systems, and the future if we have one.