Good soil holds together loosely when you grab a handful of it, compress it and open your hand. Sand doesn’t hold together at all. Clay holds together so tightly that it doesn’t let air and water through in a way that benefits plants growing in it.

Influencers that lead you to a better understanding are sometimes like good soil that holds together but lets other ideas in so that you can grow and thrive. Other influencers may block other ideas or fail to connect with you in an honest way.

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Everyone needs good influences in their life, influences that help us to grow and connect with other people and other ideas. If the influence signal is very loud and very insistent, maybe it isn’t something that can offer any benefit to you.

We all need air and water, or rather useful ideas, helpful notions, positive worldviews, confidence that a better tomorrow is possible, or that wholesome experiences are of value and that good people can achieve positive ends that help us all do better.

I heard recently that more Americans are consulting their Bibles to try to connect with old strategies that lead to a more blessed life. The Bible has been around so long that you can find many ideas in it and a lot of our culture, that is the culture of the West, has been influenced by biblical texts.

The Bible has recorded civilizations falling apart and what that looked like. People seeing mayhem in the news have become curious as to whether Clown World has been acted out on Earth in the past and whether there are recordings of it in the Bible. It is interesting to observe people making mistakes that have been described before.

The natural world is a sane place for finding a sane perspective. Walking under the sky can be a wholesome action that gives a person some fresh air and that doesn’t interject Clown World nonsense. It can be an escape from that. Talking with other people, even people who offer a totally different view of any topic can also be enriching especially when you make time to talk to many other people often.

I find myself alienated from all broadcasting at this time. Some of it seems aimed at making me feel angry and helpless. Some of it is full of obvious mistakes and lies. The effort being made to mold my opinions into fantasy offends me. I resist this.

We all face uncertainty these days. Bad politics and bad economics have led us to a place that most of us recognize as likely to bring about even more problems. I know of so many predictions about the rosy future that are turning bluer.

Take for instance the rosy future that computer technologies and the digital world would bring. Where is it? Moore’s Law showed us that exponential investments would be required in order to continue increasing computer efficiencies. But what have we achieved by making those investments? The most powerful groups have joined the computer revolution but what we see is that combining government and private enterprise gets us fascism. That is one of the worst outcomes that we could have imagined. And fascists want to control society. Social media and information censorship have led to social unhappiness and discord. Curating content hasn’t led to greater social cohesion but it has increased social distrust when we once had a high trust society. So much for exponential growth.

How about the green revolution? For instance, how about the money that would be saved with solar energy? That money disappears as soon as you add the investment column to the savings column and check for outcomes over the long haul. It costs more than it yields in savings. It’s not a winning strategy. There were investors in solar energy ready with cheap solar panels but that isn’t enough. Those panels aren’t independent of the fossil fuel industry.

What can any of us do when we face policies that don’t make sense over a longer horizon? We can rely on our own policies wherever we are to make things better.

When the experts fail, become an expert yourself. Check to see what you can do to improve your life. Don’t wait for a prognosticator to be wrong again. Fix whatever needs fixing yourself. We can make things good wherever we are. Solar energy is disappointing, but maybe a heat pump would make your house more energy efficient. Or just add some insulation to your attic. That’s one of the most cost effective saving improvements you can make.

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If you can’t afford new windows, caulk them and maybe add some storm window inserts that could save your energy when it gets cold this fall. Or put it in a wood burning stove.

When it comes to your health, you have the most influence of anyone in the choices that you make. Start a morning stretch routine. Do something aerobic everyday. Lift some weights. Go for a walk or a jog.

How about a nutritional boost with a garden planted this coming spring to give you fresh food like lettuce, tomato, peppers, carrots, broccoli or whatever you fancy.

Clean. Create better order. Reorganize your garage. Paint your bedroom or your kitchen or living room. Change things to make you like your surroundings more than before.

The easiest thing to change is your mind so change it for the better by empowering yourself to do whatever makes your life better. Don’t waste another minute, just make it happen. You’ll feel better when you make improvements wherever they are needed and wherever you can afford to do it. Utilize your agency to make order out of whatever chaos surrounds you. Be. Do.

Addendum 26 Oct 2023: According to Technocracy.news there’s a newer technology that bumps up quantum computing. Atom Computing has come up with a different technology that is more stable, that uses lasers and that allows for error checking (“fault tolerance”) at room temperature. Technocracy.news, May God Help Us: Technocrats Blow The Lid Off Quantum Computing With 1,180-Qubit Processor, Alex Wilkins via NewScientist, October 25th, 2023; https://www.technocracy.news/may-god-help-us-technocrats-blow-the-lid-off-quantum-computing-with-1180-qubit-processor/. Of course, the efficacy of this new technology doesn’t alter the political and economic shifts currently taking place because of the growth of computer technologies.