Clusters

I am staying home today.

I am having a migraine. I get these rolling pains across my head that are technically called 'cluster migraines' according to a doctor that I paid $90 to for a consultation. He also told me to avoid caffeine (inc chocolate), and that they can be caused by stress, or the release of stress, and to take nurofen or aspirin, but always to eat something before taking either, and to take zantac or something similar as well to prevent the nausea that nurofen gives me.

That was it. That in an hour long examination. Prick was a 'headache specialist' and he just wanted to grab as much stats as he could for his own studies. Didn't benefit me any. As if knowing the 'name' makes any bloody dif.

Anyhow, here I am. Slept for nearly twelve hours straight, and will spend as much of today as possible sleeping. Have got a dull throb behind one eye right now, but in ten minutes it could turn into a sharp stabbing pain in the forehead, or a line of sharp pain across the top of my head. If I go to work then I will have to spend the day doped on nurofen and will end up feeling, and behaving, as if stuck in neutral.

It is weirdly affecting my typing and my spelling is atrocious. Good thing I spell check this - there is a spelling error in almost every sentence.

Have read an interesting article on the Newsweek site about the proposed health care reforms in the US. Specifically about how they will be burden the young with the cost of looking after the old. Given the large number of financial burdens the working tax-payers in the US (and Australia) already have the future for them looks grim. Interesting point about the cost of the aged being twice the US military budget. It is even more so in Australia.

The options are:
1) Stop paying taxes, i.e. minimise income;
2) Leave;
3) Rebel; or
4) Suffer.

I believe that it must be obvious to even the stupid that this cannot be a long-term solution. The working generation is being dissuaded from having children by the expense of living themselves; they are being punished for succeeding, so they see no reason to try harder and earn more; all of this means that there will be fewer tax payers to bear the burden precisely as the older generation burgeons. As the aged cohort grows and the working cohort shrinks the cost ratios exaggerate and the system passes the bounds of stability. It fails.

The old don't care. As long as they get looked after they care not that their children will inherit a bankrupt state and will not be able to enjoy the same privileged retirement.

This is an old argument, its coming was foreseen long ago, good to see that it has now hit the main steam media and might open up some public debate.

It is, of course, just one more symptom of the collapse of Western society; indeed, of our civilisation.

I was only recently talking to someone about the cycle that all societies go through, whereby they all seem to collapse after about a thousand years or so. Egypt's Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms were each about a thousand years long, and separated by interregnums of sixty or ninety years, i.e. two or three generations. Chinese history seems to me to also have such collapses of centralised authority into anarchy or regionalised kingdoms or periods of warlords. India has gone through cycles as well, but complicated by a series of racial invasions. The Mayan collapse was mainly due to overstressed agriculture, as was the second collapse of Babylon. The first collapse of Rome, who can forget? And of course, the piece de resistance, Byzantium!

Why is Byzantium so important? Simply because it is such a total mirror image of what is happening today. The tale by Priscus (who accompanied Maximus to the court of Attila and wrote of their journey) of the Roman businessman who came to his tent one evening because he wanted to talk to someone from his old home, and maybe for the chance to talk Greek for a bit, is one of my favourite stories, short as it is. The businessman had been hounded by bureaucracy and heavy taxes and so had left the Empire and gone to live with the Huns. He had taken a Hunnic wife and he was running a successful business - without government interference or high taxation. It is the exact image of so many successful Australian and American men leaving for the Orient to start new lives. It so encapsulates where we are right now, namely one or two generations from collapse - for how long after that did Byzantium survive?

Or so I thought until a recent conversation where I was questioned as to the speed of the collapse once it is initiated. The questioner pointed out the moral degradation of modern Western society (which, I might point out, is unfortunately infecting Eastern cultures) and its impact upon society. His point was that if this was so, then will not the collapse happen sooner than I anticipate? I had to agree with his logic. I had always thought that it would be my children or grand-children that would see this fearful day, but perhaps I will live to see it.

It had been my intention to 'prepare' for the event. That is why I used to have a four hectare place in the country, where I was growing an orchid, had a vegie garden, was water sufficient, was going to get myself energy sufficient. Of course all of that was lost in my separation. And since in this country the woman always gets seventy percent, that being 'equality', I had little chance to rebuild soon. So I decided to try other options; such as trying to live to enjoy life, to explore, to see the world, experience other cultures. All of which lead me to realise that life is more fun in some other places, so why not try to emigrate and work and live there?

But the great 'GFC' (as if there haven't been dozens of others, perhaps it should be called 'GFC 14'?) put a hole in that.

I have to believe that I will pull through, achieve something worth while. Acknowledging that the next few months will be touch and go. After that, though, things should get better and I should be in a much better place than ever before.

I have to believe this, otherwise I would be tempted to blow my brains out, for after all, why choose to continue to live if you do not believe that your future life will be worthwhile?

Morbid, you think. But we all choose to believe that we will be luckier than we have any logical reason to believe. The natural psychology of man is an unjustifiable optimism. Indeed, we probably term a more realistic view to be pessimistic. The Gods will favour us. Well, I kind of don't trust deities anymore.

Which, in my mind, brings me back to the initial point; one more straw in the bundle, when will the camel's back break? Ironic, but fitting, that it may happen during Obama's first term. Sadly, unlikely, I think that the economy has some more resilience before it finally snaps.