If he gets elected I hope he has a great security force around him that can not be bought off, otherwise, he is a dead man walking...IMO

Cancer is back in the headlines.

Quote:Cancer Is Striking More Young People, and Doctors Are Alarmed and Baffled

Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around the globe, baffling doctors. Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show. A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

Doctors are racing to figure out what is making them sick, and how to identify young people who are at high risk. They suspect that changes in the way we live—less physical activity, more ultra-processed foods, new toxins—have raised the risk for younger generations.

...
The U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by one-third since 1991, thanks to a plunge in smoking and better treatment. Screening to catch cancers earlier, including breast cancer, has helped, too.

Although cancer still strikes older people far more often than the young, the rise in early-onset cancers threatens to stall progress. One in five new colorectal cancer patients in 2019 was under 55, a near doubling since 1995. These younger patients are often diagnosed at late stages. Colorectal cancer death rates among patients over 65 are going down, but for those under 50 they are going up.

“We are seeing more and more young people who don’t fit the classic teaching that cancer is a disease of aging,” said Dr. Monique Gary, medical director of the cancer program at Grand View Health in Pennsylvania.

...

The risk of developing some cancers at a young age has increased for each generation born since the 1950s, studies suggest. One found that people born in the 1990s are at double the risk for early-onset colon cancer and four times the risk for rectal cancer, compared with people born around 1950.

...

Researchers are scrutinizing possible causes ranging from inactive lifestyles to microplastics. Oncologists have found a greater risk of developing colorectal cancer at a young age among women who spent a lot of time sitting in front of the TV. Drinking sugary drinks in high school correlated with higher risk, too. Even being born via caesarean section seemed to link another group of women with higher risk of getting colorectal cancer early.

Deep-fried and highly processed foods have been implicated in other studies of early onset colorectal cancer, while diets with fiber, fruits and vegetables likely lower risks. Cancers including colorectal, breast and pancreatic have been tied to obesity, and studies support a link between excess weight and some early onset cancers.

But doctors said obesity and lifestyle can’t fully account for the plight of the people arriving at their clinics.

...

Some doctors suspect that cancer-causing exposures might have started during patients’ childhoods, something that is difficult to trace. Unlike when smoking drove up lung cancer deaths in the 20th century, doctors suspect there isn’t a single carcinogen responsible for the current trends. Some worry young people’s rising cancer risks are a sign of deeper trouble.

...

Other cancer centers are tracking groups of patients over time. Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering are collecting tumor samples and asking young patients about exposure to possible risks, from alcohol to anxiety medication. They are probing patients’ origins, too: How old were your parents when you were born? Were you breast-fed?

Quote:Global trends in incidence, death, burden and risk factors of early-onset cancer from 1990 to 2019

Abstract

Objective This study aimed to explore the global burden of early-onset cancer based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study for 29 cancers worldwid.

Methods and analysis Incidence, deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and risk factors for 29 early-onset cancer groups were obtained from GBD.

Results Global incidence of early-onset cancer increased by 79.1% and the number of early-onset cancer deaths increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019. Early-onset breast, tracheal, bronchus and lung, stomach and colorectal cancers showed the highest mortality and DALYs in 2019. Globally, the incidence rates of early-onset nasopharyngeal and prostate cancer showed the fastest increasing trend, whereas early-onset liver cancer showed the sharpest decrease. Early-onset colorectal cancers had high DALYs within the top five ranking for both men and women. High-middle and middle Sociodemographic Index (SDI) regions had the highest burden of early-onset cancer. The morbidity of early-onset cancer increased with the SDI, and the mortality rate decreased considerably when SDI increased from 0.7 to 1. The projections indicated that the global number of incidence and deaths of early-onset cancer would increase by 31% and 21% in 2030, respectively. Dietary risk factors (diet high in red meat, low in fruits, high in sodium and low in milk, etc), alcohol consumption and tobacco use are the main risk factors underlying early-onset cancers.

Conclusion Early-onset cancer morbidity continues to increase worldwide with notable variances in mortality and DALYs between areas, countries, sex and cancer types. Encouraging a healthy lifestyle could reduce early-onset cancer disease burden.

Introduction

Globally, cancer is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, resulting in a large disease burden.1 According to Global Cancer Statistics 2020, breast cancer with the largest number of 2.3 million new cases accounted for 11.7% of all cancers, followed by lung cancer (11.4%), colorectal cancer (CRC) (10.0 %), while lung cancer was the main cause of cancer death (1.8 million deaths, 18%), followed by CRC (9.4%), liver (8.3%) cancer.1 Cancer is generally more prevalent in adults over 50 years, but the incidence of early-onset cancer (<50 years) has increased worldwide.2 In comparison to later-onset cancer, the increase of early-onset cancer has significant personal and societal ramifications. Moreover, early-onset cancer and the adverse impacts of some corresponding cancer treatments may result in additional health issues during subsequent life cycle,3 which would considerably increase the disease burden associated with early-onset cancers.

...

I went to a restaurant with two friends both younger than 30. I have known both for over 10 years . Both were so glued to their phones and when the meal came they had to take pictures of the food with them smiling. Taking pictures of the food is something many do as you can see this going on by the less than 30 types in most restaurants when food is delivered. The restaurant we were at was very nice tropical inside rain forest where many pictures were also taken; the food was good.

There are some youtube videos of people walking into, falling into, crashing various things, while they have their heads in their phones.

More hard times in China as every where I look there are desperate times for the Chinese Peons. Even government workers have had the salaries cut or just not paid at all as even many of the local (call them states/provinces) do not have money to pay their people..

Quote:With businesses going bankrupt and owners drowning in debt, the banking sector is also facing financial challenges. In May 2023, a collective wage claim incident occurred at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. And then at the end of the year, China Merchants Bank, one of China's leading commercial banks, initiated a 'reverse wage claim' from its employees. Is it possible that even such a prominent bank needs to ask employees for money to get by?

There should be consequences for attacking maritime shipping in the Red Sea. I am surprised this has happen though as Biden took the Houthis off the terror watch list a few years ago thinking we can all get along... I keep waiting for a serious strike upon Iran who seems to be backing everyone who wants to destroy Israel...then we will have a real shooting war !

Quote:

The Stormberger Prophecies

Matthias Stormberger, the cow herder at Rabenstein, Germany, had some remarkable visions of the future in 1830. Mathias Lang is also known as Stormberger in some prophecy circles. Lang was illiterate and had no education, yet he predicted many things like airplanes, telephones and much more. He lived in Bavaria between 1753 to 1820. He made the following predict before World War One:

Prophecy:

"Iron rods will be built and iron monsters will bark through the wilderness."

"Cars without horses and shaft will come . ."

"And man will fly through the air like birds."

“When in the outskirts of the forest the iron road will be finished, and there the iron horse will be seen, a war will begin, to last twice two years. It would be fought with iron fortresses that move without horses.”

“Right after this horrible war there will come a time when money will have no value. For 200 guilders not even a loaf of bread will be available, and yet there shall be no famine. Money will be made of iron, and gold shall become so valuable that for a few gold coins a small farm can be bought.”

“After the Great War there will be no peace. The people will rise and all will fight against each other... The rich and noble will be killed. The World War will not make people better but much worse... Tell your children that their children will live to see the time when the earth will be cleared. God will do away with people because there will be no charity among men. Religious faith will decline; priests will not be respected; people will be intent only on eating and drinking; there will be many immensely rich people and large amounts of paupers; great wealth will not endure long, for the red caps will come. People will hide in forests and many will go into exile. After this civil conflict and general clearing, people will love each other as much as previously they hated one another.”

“Two or three decades after the first war it will come one a Second War still larger. Almost all the nations of the world will be involved. Millions of men will die, without being soldiers. The fire will fall from the sky and many great cities will be destroyed.”

“The Catholic faith will almost completely disappear, the religiousness will be quite badly respected, they will not earn any respect due to their way of living.”

“There won’t be many good Christians among the people, the Commandments of God are no longer respected by the aristocracy as well as by the smallest worker.”

“One will not think the greatest unfairness to be a sin. When the faith disappears also the love of the next one will completely lose itself. One will not estimate the justice, often the poor one will not be given right and he will be less respected than a dog.”

“After this a mischief will arise that has to be regretted, there will be no order among the people.”

“After the second great war, people will think that peace has arrived, but it will be an interval only. One day a third World War will start, more awful than the preceding ones.”

“After the end of the Second Great War, a third universal conflagration will come, so that it will determine everything.”

“When women walk around in pants, and men have become effeminate, so that one will no longer be able to tell men from women, then the time is near.”

People will build houses everywhere, high houses, low houses, one after another. When everyone builds, when everywhere buildings rise, everything will be cleared away.”

“There will be a holy Sign in the heavens, that a very severe Master will come and take off the Skin of the People. He will not rule very long, then when all that has happened as I said, then comes the great Clearing Away.”

“There will be weapons totally new. In one day, more men will die than in all the previous wars. The battles will be accomplished with artificial weapons.”

“Gigantic catastrophes will happen. With the open eyes, the nations of the planet will go through these catastrophes. They won’t know what is happening, and those that know and tell, will be silenced.”

“Everything will be different from before, and in many places the Earth will be a great cemetery. The third war will be the end of many nations.”

“The Bavarian land will be devastated, and the land of Bohemia (Bohemia is 2/3 of the Czech Republic) will be cleaned out as by a broom. Over all these places and over the Bohemian mountains will come the Reds... not the French, but the Reds.”

“You, my children, won’t experience the largest mischief, you my grandchildren, won’t also experience it, but the third stock, that will easily experience it.”

“Over night it will take place –in a pub in Zwiesel (a cityin Bavariaknown for its glass) many people will be together, and outside the soldiers will ride over the bridge. The people will run out of the forest.Those who hide themselves at the Fuchsenriegel (a place in Austria) or at the Falkenstein (a stone castle, building with thick walls of stone?) remain spared. Who survives must have an iron heading.”

“The people become ill, and nobody can help them . . .” “However it will continue, and what follows then, is the end of the world. Sky and earthburn, because it is the time when everything comes to an end. And this time will be, when the wild hunt with fire and sulphur roars over the country.”

After this, he said,“No humans will know anymore where Zwiesel and where Rabenstein (German towns) havebeen. Of all frights this will be the last. When the people fall off the bank like the flies off the wall, the last time begins. It will be horrible.

“But when however, someone at the whole Danube stream finds still another cow, then she is worth it to be attached with a silver bell by the owner.”

“After these events it will be a miracle, if one still sees twoor three rulers going together. After these events the clarity will be anew, and those who survived, will face a good time for hope.”

“Then afterward a good time will come, that which is Loved by Jesus Christ, and holy men will do wonders. Once people have their faith again, a long period of peace will follow. Those who are still alive will be given housing and as much land as they need. And the more hands one has, the more you will count.”

“Then there will be a shortened summer; winter and summer will not be distinguishable. Although everything around the Danube is wasted and dead, there will be people living in the woods and they will build houses in the woods ---beautiful houses, in fact, because all bad things are over and all difficulties have been surpassed. And soon the nettles will grow out of the old buildings. And the forest will grow again without war and death.”

“Those who begin a new will build a church and praise God. Those who survive will say to each other ‘Brother, are you still living?’ and greet one another saying, ‘Jesus Christ be praised!’ This will not only be with us, but over the whole world. Right will become right again and peace will govern for many years.”

 

 

WHO IS THE ANTICHRIST?

"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:22)
"and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world" (1 John 4:3)
"For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist" (2 John 1:7)
"The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie" (2 Thess. 2:9-11)

 

 

Warning: Moscow Continue with their old Soviet miss-information strategies and lies:

Putin's KGB Long Range Plans Explained by His Communist Mentor: MIKHAIL GORBACHEV's speech at the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917):
"....In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road." And from his speech to the Soviet Politburo, November 1987:
"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep. We want to accomplish three things:
One, we want the Americans to withdraw conventional forces from Europe. Two, we want them to withdraw nuclear forces from Europe.
Three, we want the Americans to stop proceeding with Strategic Defense Initiative." (And alas, that is what has been done!)

Rykov, Lenin's successor in the Council of Soviet Commissars, corroborated: "It is our duty to inculcate in the minds of nations the theories of international friendship, pacifism, and disarmament, encouraging their resistance to military appropriations and training, without ever relaxing our own efforts in building our military equipment.''

Manuilsky, a prominent Soviet professor at the School of Political Warfare, said: "The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. We shall begin by Launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends."

And Khrushchev, a more contemporary Soviet prime minister, said: "We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find out they have Communism.''

 

 

All Americans should be aware that the main target of Godless Marxists is the US Constitution. How are they plan to take it down? By labeling founding fathers of the USA as racists and slave owners. That is why Communists keep playing race cards everywhere they can. The whole thing started a long time ago by Communists in KGB Russia to create civil war here in America by playing the race cards with everybody.

I've been keeping track of this mission and right out of the gate we started having issues. After reading this article a question came to mind.

Did they even miss the trajectory and would have missed the moon entirely; and is this a soft confession of it?

I may be missing something here, so I'll bring it to the groups attention and maybe one of you can tell me if I'm wrong, or if they would have missed the moon entirely..

Business Insider article:


Astrobotic's lunar lander could still make it far enough to reach the moon — but the moon will be in the wrong place when it arrives.

The spacecraft, called Peregrine, has already traveled 200,000 miles away from Earth, which is about 84% the distance to the moon, Astrobotic said Wednesday.
It suffered an accident when it launched Tuesday and started leaking fuel, scotching its chances of reaching the moon as planned.

It was due to run out of fuel on Thursday — but Astrobotic posted an update saying they had figured out how to make it last longer.

Per its estimate, the craft would have propellant until about 7 a.m. ET on Friday.

This means the lander could yet reach the lunar distance — the required number of miles to reach the moon.

But, though it didn't give precise details, Astrobotic was clear that the moon won't be there at the right time. (notice how they worded that. Like it was the moons fault)




As part of Peregrine's flight plan, the lander was due to reach as high as lunar distance. But the spacecraft is then due the circle back toward Earth so it can loop around our planet and slingshot back on to lunar orbit, Astrobotic said.

It would take another 10 days to reach the moon on this route, by which time the spacecraft is expected to have run out of fuel.

Astrobotic's leading theory for the leak is that a valve connecting two tanks failed, allowing pressurized helium to leak into a tank of oxidizer, causing it to burst.

Still, Astrobotic is trying to collect as much scientific information as possible from this attempt and has been racing to extend the spacecraft's operational lifespan as far as it can go.

This NASA-backed mission might ultimately fail to reach the moon, but that's not the end of the space agency's lunar ambitions.

Astrobotic's Peregrine was the first of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) program, a plan aimed at helping private firms develop lunar landers by contracting them to deliver various payloads to the moon.

There are a slew of private lunar lander missions in the works. Another CLPS mission, operated by Houston-based firm Intuitive Machines, is due to launch in a few weeks.

NASA also aims to push forward its ambitions for a crewed lunar landing by the end of the decade. The agency announced Tuesday it aims to put boots on the moon by 2026 after delaying the mission launch by a year.
https://www.businessinsider.com/astrobot...ine-2024-1

I've given the article in its entirety. Well, Rogue-nation, was this an admission to failing in the trajectory as well as the fuel leak? What do you see here? ((notice the red letter sentence. the way they worded that. as if it were the moons fault))

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entities calling themselves 'axemom' and 'hatnews' are spamming ATS

hopefully removed soon.

get a life, people.

This is a recent Earthfiles video and if any of the reports are true about lights detected on distant planets then "WOW" .... color me doubtful but interesting nonetheless.

Life after death questions...

Decadent empires - which we most definitely are - always become hidebound, top-heavy, brittle, bureaucratic, delusional, un-self-critical and arrogant.

Can we avoid the fate of previous regimes?

Arnold Toynbee wasn't holding his breath...

Quote:Challenge and how is the response

In his monumental Study of History, a vast, twelve volume work that he laboured at for nearly thirty years, the twentieth century historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations succeed or fail according to a certain pattern. He called this pattern, “challenge and response.” Certain crises arise that the civilization must face and overcome. Failing to do so leads to their collapse. On the face of it, this observation seems obvious, but there is more to it than this. Crises and challenges come in different shapes and sizes and what is important in Toynbee’s vision of history is the kind of crisis a civilization faces, because it is this that will determine its response.

By ‘kind’ here, Toynbee is concerned not so much with the concrete details of the crisis, whether it is economic, environmental, natural, or man-made, as when one nation invades another, which we have seen in recent times. What is important for Toynbee is the level or degree of crisis, how great or small it may be. Why is this important? Because Toynbee recognised that this made all the difference.

If a crisis is too great, then the civilization fails to muster the necessary response, and collapses fairly quickly. But if the crisis is too small, not great enough, the civilization overcomes it too easily, becomes complacent, and begins to rest on its oars. Decay sets in and the civilization slowly goes under. We can say that one is a rapid collapse, the other a gentle but steady disintegration.

Between these two forms of what we may call “civilizational failure,” there may not be much to choose, but Toynbee also believed that if the challenge is “just right,” both can be avoided. This is where Goldilocks comes in, although Toynbee himself didn’t refer to that enigmatic fairy tale character. For if the challenge is great enough to force the civilization to make enormous efforts, but not so great that it is overwhelmed  by it, then the civilization can overcome it, and move on to a higher level. The challenge has been “just right,” just as in the fairy tale,  the warm bowl of porridge (not too hot nor too cold) and optimum bed (not too soft or too hard) were for Goldilocks at the three bears’ house.

We can say that the appropriate challenge forces the civilization to grow, just as the challenges in our individual lives do for each of us. In his remarkable work A Vision – which presents a view of history not dissimilar to Toynbee’s – the poet W. B. Yeats had something similar in mind when he spoke of “the fates,” the forces behind our individual destiny. In individuals, the fates’ task is “to bring their chosen man to the greatest obstacle he can face without despair.” So we can say that, if Toynbee and Yeats are correct, then what is needed for both our collective and individual growth are challenges that are “just right.”

Today we are certainly not bereft of challenges. New ones seem to appear each day. They span the spectrum of crises. Climate change, economic disaster, social upheaval, epidemics, war, civil conflicts, political corruption, mass migration, famine are just some of the difficulties facing much of the world as we head toward the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. We seem to have entered what Toynbee called a “time of troubles,” when the challenges a civilization cannot avoid rear their heads.

What would Toynbee have thought of this? We can assume he wouldn’t think the challenges facing us weren’t great enough. But would he have thought they were too great?

Toynbee died in 1975, almost half a century ago. Many of the crises facing us now were just starting then, or at least our awareness of them was. Toward the end of his life, when asked his opinion on what was ahead, Toynbee admitted that he was glad to be leaving the scene and not entering it. His advice to those who would remain after his departure was to “cling and wait.” Not terribly hopeful words, but Toynbee knew that it is better to face a “time of troubles” honestly than with false optimism.

If we are faced with what we might call an embarrassment of crises, what of our response? This, too, can assume different forms. There are, of course, the various rational, practical, utilitarian plans and projects designed to deal with our crises in a reasonable, ‘scientific’ way. Various technological solutions are proffered, as well as large scale social changes, involving alterations in people’s ‘life styles’ and eating habits. Reduction of their use of oil and other supposedly damaging substances upon which our civilization has become dependent, are suggested, if not demanded outright.


How effective these different responses may be we cannot tell, and people’s reaction to them differ widely, from complacent acquiescence in our unavoidable extinction, to fanatical insistence on immediately adopting the most stringent measures in order to stave this off. Many people, if not most, fall somewhere between these extremes; I know that is the position I occupy.

I can’t say that I have any answers to these questions. I do wonder, though, if the response needed to meet our challenges – assuming we are capable of meeting them – will come from somewhere other than in this direction, or from any direction we are even aware of, in our usual way.

What do I mean by this? The psychologist C. G. Jung had a similar idea to Toynbee’s “challenge and response” in regard to the human psyche. Jung recognised that although we may have a conscious desire to change, to rid ourselves of some debilitating neurosis or personal failing, more often than not, this isn’t sufficient to free us of the paralysis that keeps the bad habit in place. But a crisis that confronts us with the absolute necessity to do so, can shake up the unconscious, and free the psychic energy needed to break the habit. Reason, good intentions, and other conscious inducements fall flat, but when life is seriously threatened, the psyche will respond. It knows the conscious ego for the vacillating coward it is. But it recognises a real need when it sees one.

I can’t imagine our unconscious – our personal one but also our collective, social one – isn’t aware of our situation. We can’t insist it respond in the way we would like, but we can pay attention and see what that response may be, if indeed there is one. I believe there will be a response, and that it will emerge in individuals. Not in mass movements or political leaders or in some form of technology, but in the consciousness of different people, around the globe. They won’t necessarily know each other or be aware of what is happening to them, and the change taking place in them may at first be more of a burden than a blessing. But they will feel different and their view of things will be different from those around them. And very likely this may make life even more difficult for them.

Colin Wilson, a writer who has influenced me a great deal, calls such people “outsiders.” They are individuals, men and women, who have an appetite for meaning and purpose, that our increasingly mechanised and more and more ‘robotic’ way of life cannot provide. They are not satisfied with bigger television screens, more sophisticated mobile phones, more highly advanced computers, or the latest developments in AI. They know life is about something other than this, as helpful as these things may be. What that ‘something else’ might be is not always clear, and their need to satisfy their deep hunger for meaning may lead them into strange, sometimes dangerous pursuits. But the moments in which they feel truly alive, truly real, however they are obtained, are more important to them than anything else.

A similar sensibility informs individuals that the psychologist Abraham Maslow, a great influence on Wilson, calls “self-actualisers.” Maslow, one of the founders of humanist and existential psychology, is probably best known for devising what he called a “hierarchy of needs.” Maslow recognised that we are motivated by fulfilling certain basic needs, shared by all people, whatever their background. First there is the need for food. Then, when this is satisfied, we feel a need for shelter, a home of some kind, even if it is only a single room. After this comes the need for a relationship, for love and sex, a ‘significant other’. Finally, there is the need for what Maslow called “self-esteem,” the good opinion of others, to be recognised and appreciated by them.

These are all what Maslow called “deficiency needs;” they are for something we lack. But at the top of his hierarchy, Maslow put a different kind of need. Not a need for something we don’t have, but the need to use what we do possess. This is a “creative need,” the need to use our energies toward some purpose, some end in itself – not a utilitarian purpose, but a creative one.

Maslow believed we all are capable of reaching this level, which he called “self-actualization.” But in his later years he was saddened to realise that not everyone does. This was not because adverse conditions prevented it. Maslow knew that many self-actualisers emerge from difficult backgrounds – he did himself – while many people coming from well-off, comfortable and even supportive backgrounds, do not self-actualise, or at least, show no interest in doing so. Many, if not most of us are happy to stay at the self-esteem level, and I would say that recent developments like social media provide evidence of this. Many of us spend a great deal of time posting things online and competing with others for ‘likes’, trying to stand out momentarily amidst the ‘stream’ of continual ‘content’. We are special and we want others to notice it, while we note how special they are too.

This may seem a gloomy prospect, but I think it actually suggests something positive. Because if a great many people in our global civilization occupy the self-esteem rung on Maslow’s hierarchy, that suggests that a fair size number must inhabit the self-actualization level. We may not hear of them, but that makes perfect sense. Because, while those fulfilling their self-esteem need draw as much attention to themselves as possible, self-actualisers work alone. They are too busy actualising their creative possibilities to tweet about it. Like Wilson’s ‘outsiders’, self-actualisers are often solitary and more interested in what is going on in their heads than in what the latest bread and circuses on NetFlix and elsewhere have to offer.

I believe that if Toynbee, Yeats, and Jung are right, and if the ‘fates’, whoever they are, have brought us to “the greatest obstacle we can face without despair,” then it is in these characters, the ‘outsiders’ and self-actualisers, that the response needed to overcome this obstacle will arise. And the response will be the lives of these individuals themselves, how they live, their values, what is important to them. They will embody the kind of seriousness and creativity necessary to face what lies ahead.

I also like to think that, although these ‘outsiders’ and self-actualisers may not know each other, they are nevertheless working toward the same goal. Just as elementary particles that were once in touch with each other, but no longer are, still ‘know’ what each other are doing – through the phenomenon of ‘quantum entanglement’ – and just as neurons in the brain involved in the same operations fire simultaneously, although they are not contiguous, might it not be the case that the actions of these individual people, scattered around the world, will add up to something more than themselves?

What that something more is, I cannot say, other than the possible emergence of a growth in consciousness. I can certainly think of no other response adequate to the challenges facing us. Let us hope that when it comes, it will be “just right.”