“Why do I think I understand something that others don’t? . . . Nobody acknowledges [the big, long-term debt cycle] or talks about it. I couldn’t find any good studies or descriptions of it in textbooks, and even the world’s leading economists . . . didn’t have much to say about this critically important subject when I explored it with them. . . . It doesn’t matter exactly why these dynamics are overlooked. I am going to paint a picture of what happens and why, and if there is enough interest in what I’m saying, my template will be assessed and will live or die on its merits . . . . If we don’t agree on how things work, we won’t be able to agree on what’s happening or what is likely to happen.” – Ray Dalio, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (Avid Reader Press 2025, pp. 2-4)
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Wandering Through the Halls of Make-Believe
The way things are
It frustrates Ray Dalio that his passion for understanding his subject isn’t shared by others. That what it’s taught him is overlooked, and we will be overtaken by events that he foresees that could have been prevented as a result. His subject is the big debt cycle. A phenomenon beyond the capacity of economics, investing, and public policy to factor into decisions because it outlasts the average individual life span. If it isn’t of immediate relevance it’s left to another time to contemplate. Which means shit will happen and when it does, furious competition will erupt in the media for supremacy in self-imagery. Then it becomes relevant.
My frustration is with a subject that’s overlooked for similar reasons, because it’s not “relevant.” But also for another that doesn’t frustrate Ray Dalio: roughly half the populace wants it to be overlooked. So that its dire consequences will occur instead of being avoided. Unlike investors who presumably don’t want to lose their shirts many in my imaginary audience would be delighted if everyone loses their shirts. And their pants and everything else. They earnestly do not want agreement on how things work if it deprives them of what they do want: the end of humanity.
The “how things work” that’s my subject Is the way things are. Physically and metaphysically. Which is to say metaphysically with a physical dimension whose properties are not just distinct from metaphysics but its reverse. Including the property of reality: one being real, the other being unreal. Its reverse, whereupon I’ve lost that segment of my imaginary audience who lust after humanity’s demise because they’re self-styled “realists.” Who won’t have the satisfaction of our story’s end if sensory perception can’t be there to hallucinate it. One being a necessary adjunct of the other: observance with our five body’s senses and the bodies and other material objects observed.
The principle of Guidance
Ray Dalio built up to his latest book with principles laid out in earlier books. Ideas that, together, explain what he’s talking about. My essays have similarly explored principles for understanding the way things are but there the similarity ends. You can’t explain what I’m talking about by pulling all my essays together. First, because they contain wrong turns as well as right turns. They’re working papers, a work in progress. Second, because they were then, this is now.
Whatever stands for “right” when getting it right – when understanding the way things are – must be spontaneous and it must be Now. Which means happening in a dimension inaccessible to my mind, your mind, or anyone else’s mind in this life. We exist in time, and time is an expression of a mad idea of not spontaneous, not Now. “Now” being itself an expression that implies a point in time for which we have no expression. There’s no getting it right In this life. No ‘knowing’ in a hallucination. Only doing better with perceptions and that only when Guidance is helping. With spontaneous insights or however else it connects, because its source is metaphysics: Definition of the way things are.
Dalio’s passion for understanding his subject rewarded him with hard and fast principles. Mine has rewarded me with principles too, but where he’s captured his mine can’t be ‘captured.’ They’re the bluebird on Uncle Remus’s shoulder. Indispensable to his wonderful day but “there” or not “there” at its own discretion, not his. How it helped Dalio with his insights only he knows. How it’s helped me can’t be ‘known,’ but it does seem more accessible and voluble when I toss whatever notes it’s already inspired to write from inspiration in the moment. To let it think along with me during the act of writing. If it sounds like I don’t know what I have to say until I say it that’s what I’m saying.
This applies to individual sentences. That may begin with a word detached from any meaning I’m aware of until I write it. Then to reveal itself to me as though I were reader instead of writer. Audience instead of performer. A status to which I might object if I hadn’t been taught that without help from ‘my’ bluebird my being human – a sub-species of ape – couldn’t tie my shoes let alone explain the way things are. The principle of ‘Guidance,’ to which I refer often in my essays.
The game of self-imagery and appearances
Whose choice is the one act for which human-ape is responsible and accountable. Because we have the means to distinguish it from the wrong ‘guide’ and it’s the one choice we can make without being manipulated into it. If somebody does somebody wrong it goes with the territory. But where they aren’t left off the hook is in allowing themselves to be manipulated into doing it. The principle of accountability, to which I also refer often.
All provocations are manipulations. That, being self-unaware, we can’t be aware of and therefore accountable for. But we can be aware of manipulation. The original provocation, that will go on manipulating and provoking until we take charge of our own lives. Until we untie the rope around our necks tethering us to the source of our misguided satisfactions: our own reverse self-image. The one eternally committed to winning the game of self-imagery. The game of appearances.
Having fun at others’ expense
Why do I think we know better? Because the function of our metaphysical one Self in Creation is Free Choice. In Creation there is no being without function – without doing. Free Choice is hard-wired into the Self that we are in Reality, and though it was disempowered before the hallucination our very purpose here, in unreality, is to earn and learn it. By throwing off our blanket of self-unawareness and getting on our own two feet. With the competence to choose freely. To conduct ourselves with character and integrity in a world of ass-kissing hierarchical corruption.
Yes, it’s true that in a hallucination of self-unawareness we can’t be accountable for conduct. But when it becomes evident that our self-unawareness is self-imposed the free ride ends. We know better because milady doth protest too much. ‘Realists’ oppose exposure of Reality and Truth not because sensory perception blocks awareness but because they know it doesn’t. Their manipulator- ‘guide’ is deception from beginning to end and delights in it. The principle of self-deception to which I refer often.
That occurred before the hallucination and caused it, but now what I refer to is the phenomenon of body-centered personality types I refer to as ‘realists’. Who delight in avoiding accountability by willing themselves to be self-unaware. Human ostriches with their heads in the sand thinking themselves clever by half. Protected by deniability and excused from accountability. Play-acting game-players having fun at others’ expense.
Movement at the Beginning
‘Realism’ from the snout of a wart hog
Then what’s this about ‘Movement?’ A principle that strikes me as a good place to begin. Because it’s where Reality and Truth begin but also deception. In that order. And immediately we are into deception, because the wrong ‘guide’ announces its wrongness with its first absurdity. The mother of all absurdities including the one that underlies the pretensions of ‘conservative’ ideology: the idea that the correct order is deception first and then Reality and Truth. Something there that isn’t Movement that’s disturbed by Movement.
Yes, I’ve lost you. We were talking about the way things are and you were thinking, yeah, maybe that would be nice to know. Things are complicated and they’re always changing, so maybe this guy has an idea that’s worth listening to. Or maybe he’s a crackpot. Now it’s looking like we’re wasting our time. Well, guess what. You’re not wasting your time. You’re unused to communicating in ideas instead of representations at one remove. And you have the attention span of a wart hog. A suitable metaphor for the intelligence of ‘realists,’ rooting around in the underbrush. Letting their snouts tell them everything there is to know.
Going in circles
The principle of Mindfulness. Everything is Mind. Including matter, a form of Energy that however unmindful it seems is nevertheless inseparable from Mind. Energy would revert to inertia in a heartbeat if it were deprived of direction. And where does direction come from? From Mind. Whether in a state of Self-Awareness or the reverse. Unconsciousness or self-unawareness, a state of mind with which human-ape is thoroughly familiar even if we’ve willed ourselves into unawareness of it. Where would Mind be without Energy and vice versa? Logical basics that elude Sapiens’ mental comprehension when mental comprehension itself is eluded by deception. By minds equipped with differentiation and empathy, Logic and Love, but only fitfully committed to their use.
Manipulated by the principle of separation, that would untie everything in the Reality of Mind-Relationship if it could. But even though it can’t it has a field day untying everything here. That goes into Definition in hallucination-on-Earth, including the connection between Mind and Energy which results in the absurdity of matter having no connection to Mind. Gulling the impressionable with arch-foolishness perpetrated by supposedly towering intellects like Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, authors of nonsense. A material universe whose source is another material universe or no source at all. With no allowance for the role of Mind-Energy in either.
Matter without Mind. Logic without Love. Two violations of common sense by the principle of separation that keep ‘realists’ in business and Sapiens going in circles with its “quest for knowledge.”
‘Action’
OK, back to Movement. Clear your mind of everything and just ask what got everything started. If we want to get it right, the way things are, then what went on at the beginning? You’ll think I’m asking what happened at the beginning of time. I’m not. No matter what dimension we’re in, time or timeless, Logic dictates that stuff happens in a logical sequence. Before comes first, then after. Even in the Now when everything is supposed to happen all at once, there’s a before-after. And no matter how hard deception tries it can’t change the natural order of things. That is, in Reality. Here where we are, in life on Earth, the cart appears before the horse as often as not.
Reality is Creation. And Creation can’t be what it is or do what it does without heading into the unknown. Into an ‘after’ that opens up possibilities that only unforeseen circumstances, changing circumstances, can produce. Am I saying that Mind-Relationship doesn’t know everything? Damn right I am. If it did it would be the unrelatable know-it-all presiding over the non-existent big picture – a joke.
Am I saying that Mind-Relationship and Creation aren’t perfect? Damn right I am. If it’s to be authentic Creation must be structure as well as process, and its structure must have integrity of it would collapse. Where integrity comes from is Free Choice, which to be free must be able to choose in error. To make mistakes. And if it’s a function of Mind-Relationship, even if it’s Mind’s Child, then neither Parent nor Child is ‘perfect.’
But relatable they are. And in Creation whose cause is Loving Friendship relatability is all that matters, not being perfect or a know-it-all. How much more livable life on Earth would be if Sapiens could part with its infatuation with unrelatability — its hierarchical know-it-all ‘God’ and its warlords of invulnerability crushing innocents beneath their jackboots. The specter of annihilation taking our country down now and the rest of the world with it in a spasm of cruelty. While Sapiens takes it all in with breathless fascination, like an audience thrilled that at last someone has set fire to the theatre. Action! Entertainment at last!
Manipulations by willfulness
The principle of Movement keeps us guessing. Because we’re always in motion. Because everything being Mind it’s always thinking and feeling. The principle of Self-Awareness. An attribute of Mind that’s Love and Logic combined. Inseparable. That’s routinely, habitually, congenitally violated by ape-human animal instinct, manifest even in Sapiens vaunted intellect. The mad idea that ‘reason’ requires their separation. That I view as the main cause of avoidable human-ape self-destruction, wrongdoing, and suffering. The principle of Relationship between Love and Logic without which Movement would be impossible.
You’ve noticed. My hands tighten into fists when I say so. Why? Because the vision of Love and Logic together, forming the prototypical Self, the original Relationship from which all elements of Creation are derived, is all things Good. Loving Friendship. The Ideal for which Creation is the expression. For which life on Earth is meant to be its destruction. An ideal that, here on Earth, is worth fighting for.
Why else would I bother with a website and essays when I could be sipping mint juleps on the veranda? It sets Ray Dalio off that investors get burned by debt cycles when sensible public policy could prevent it. It pisses me off that spontaneous acts of kindness by Loving Friendship are savagely mischaracterized as manipulations by willfulness. By reverse-reflection, self-image in a mirror capable of recognizing only its own reflection in others. Mirrors of itself. That has no place in the ideal of family but, here on Earth, that’s where it’s to be found. In my experience anyway. Every family I’ve experienced over a life span of eighty-seven years is an operating theatre for vivisection. Emotionally abusive. Emotionally gruesome.
Movement without a shock-absorber
So we’re into theatre of another kind: psychological. Overwrought stuff. Innocence and guilt. Mutilated figures on crucifixes, tearful souls confessing their sins. Bullshit. None of it necessary. None of it logical. When the principle of Movement explains it away with this. The simple rule expressed by Isaac Newton: that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Spontaneous Relationship between Love and Logic ignited evolution and Creation, activated Mind and Self-Awareness, and got everything started. But before it was all of this it was Movement. That produced an equal and opposite reaction. Movement in the opposite direction. Like the recoil of a rifle against your shoulder, or artillery – a German 88 or an American 155 mm Howitzer.
A phenomenon familiar to physics that happens to have its origin in metaphysics. Why? Because of the state in which the original Movement occurred. A state in which a big picture overseen by a know-it-all was impossible. Impossible because Movement is the only possible state in which anything can happen. A big picture static by definition would be the expression of an absurdity: a thing brought about by anti-movement. By a stand for existence that stands against its only possible cause. A self-contradiction that by definition can’t be Real.
If it had been real the Movement that ignited evolution and Creation would not have had an equal and opposite reaction. Would not have recoiled, because its shock would have been absorbed by its foundation: the big picture. There was no big picture. The proof of it is Newton’s law at its metaphysical origin. No foundation to absorb the shock, therefore no big picture to supply the foundation.
Confined to a planet of the apes
Why worth mentioning? Because, for one thing, ‘conservatives’ are currently winning our country’s race to the bottom, as NY Times columnist David Brooks puts it. They’re pursuing an ‘ideal’ that has no basis in Logic or Reality. The idea that before there was Movement – before there was change – there was an idyllic state of perfection undisturbed by it. The mythical big picture presided over by the prototypical ‘conservative.’ A know-it-all entitled to rule as it pleases without limits on its freedom including definition.
Does this sound familiar? It should. I describe the current ruling party in our country and its leader. More devastating by far than Ray Dalio’s Big Debt Crisis because of its goal: annihilation of civilization. Mass extinction. Triumph of the Will. Does that sound familiar? Ever heard of Leni Riefenstahl and her hero? Remember World War II? I do. Remember the day Hiroshima was A-bombed? Eighty years ago yesterday. I do. Should we be worried that we can’t agree on how things work in Ray Dalio’s world of investors? How about if we can’t agree on the way things are in Reality and Creation? Is the manipulator and his legions of ass-kissers going to get away with his provocations until our not-Reality of appearances disappears? Until ‘life on Earth’ proves that Sapiens can never rise above a species of animal? Confined to a planet of the apes. A cage and a zoo.
Reverse-Opposites
The original conspiracy theory
The principle of Movement is responsible for all of it. The Good with evolution forward and Loving Friendship in Creation and the ‘bad’ with it. Except that without the ‘bad’ that tagged along with the first stirrings of Movement there would be no Movement, its being hard-wired into the Definition of Movement. That like all things must be defined by what it isn’t and doesn’t do as well as by what it is and does do. Built into the nature of Logic. Into the Logic of Logic: that the character of all that’s Real and Good requires dissent. Contradiction. Otherwise it would degrade into self-regard. Into its reverse-reflection: willfulness. A virus or cancer, replication or metastasis. The herd of ass-kissing wild beasts running roughshod over our country.
The ’bad’ is ‘bad’ in Reality but only as a hypothesis. A theoretical proposition that’s thoroughly illogical but is given a place in Definition because of the state that accompanied – not preceded – the original Movement. The state that in the absence of a big picture can be characterized as anything goes. The proposition being whatever is implied by Movement’s reverse-opposite.
This the origin of the prototypical deception: the mythical big picture and its ‘supreme being.’ Its presence in Reality that consigns it to unreality where it’s inactive and can’t contradict Reality. Its presence in unreality – life on Earth – an active contradiction. Anything goes brought to ‘life’ in a hierarchical animal kingdom of ass-kissing corruption. Ruled by an inaccessible, unrelatable ‘supreme being.’ ‘God.’ The know-it-all who accompanied the original movement. The inventor of all deceptions beginning with the original conspiracy theory, that Relationship between Love and Logic brought about their Child Free Choice’s degradation into a beast inhabiting a zoo in a hierarchy of corruption.
Ignition
Am I saying that ‘God’ is a concept born of deception? Tethered to life on Earth and antithetical to Reality and Creation? I am. Though in the next breath I am quick to point out that the connection of Guidance to Definition is Real in any state of Mind and the ‘God’ that isn’t hierarchical corruption and deception is Relationship. The principle of Movement brought us all of these things but most distressingly a voice in Sapiens’ mind that’s an endless source of deception. That needn’t mess with the way things are. That needn’t frustrate Ray Dalio with investor ignorance if only we kept in mind its defining attribute: that it’s not real. It’s total bullshit.
That took two simple truths – two logical necessities — and turned them into a Wagnerian opera of Gotterdammerung consequence. A psychological morass. A labyrinth of ill will. A nightmare of undisciplined savagery. The truths of Newton’s law of reverse-reaction and the logic of Logic, that hypothesizes what a thing isn’t when it defines what it is. When anything goes. With no implication of innocence or guilt, pleasure or pain. The way things are at their essence. Utterly Harmless. Neutral.
Where does all this self-destructive melodrama come from? From the all-important principle of opposites, without which Movement would not have occurred nor its reverse-reflection in life on Earth. The coming together of boundaryless Love with boundaried Logic was the ignition for everything. The connecting of two wires, two functions of Mind that activated its identity not as a monolith of willfulness dispensing commandments from a mountaintop but as a role model for Loving Friendship. As a support for Spontaneity and Creativity within the protection of Order.
At the risk of a child’s life
Love and Logic are opposites. That complement one another, and so it was the power of attraction between opposites that ignited evolution. Energy in the Now. A force that knows no boundaries even between Reality and hallucination, and so its presence is felt here despite all the efforts of manipulation, deception, and ‘realism’ to deny it. What it’s meant for in our context is Guidance. To show us how to reconcile our differences. By recognizing that, being fragments, each of us needs help from others to complete ourselves. To follow the example of Love and Logic by joining rather than separating. By complementing rather than opposing. So that the new Self that’s formed is capable of serving a greater purpose. The purpose of Creation in harmony. The sum that’s greater than its parts.
I speak as a grandparent who would complement, and be complemented by, the function of parent. So that benevolence and competence greater than either can be brought to bear in the raising of grandchildren. I have followed the example of A Course in Miracles in exploring the metaphysics of the way things are. In applying its lessons to individual relationships on the ground as best I can, and now await the result. Spontaneity from parent and grandchildren both if friction is to be replaced by friendship. If fragments are to become whole and let themselves out of their psychological cages. Or willfulness, if ‘realism’ must win its competition for supremacy in self-imagery. At all costs, even at the risk of a child’s life.
Isabel Briggs Myers’ Gifts Differing (1980) suggests that individuals with personality type opposites can work with one another to strengthen each other’s weaknesses. Because our types aren’t cast in concrete. They’re preferences. An idea whose ultimate source is the example set by Love bonding with Logic in Reality. Further evidence, moreover, of the legitimacy of Jungian personality type theory and the flim-flammery of its ‘scientific’ reverse-opposite, the so-called “Five-Factor” theory.
‘Realists’ scoff at Jung-Myers-Briggs of course. Since they’re one of its personality types, puffed up with ‘invincibility.’ The antithesis of Movement that originated with the non-existent big picture at the beginning. Absurdity must triumph over reason must it not? If winning the game of self-imagery is at stake. If it’s appearances in a hallucination of appearances that are to be won or lost. But maybe not. Maybe parent and grandparent can bridge the gap, turn friction into attraction, and do the right thing for their children. Dare I hope?
Let the games begin!
What hangs in the balance always in life on Earth, in the hallucination, is which of the powers of opposites will prevail. Whether the power of attraction or the power of friction. In relationships at home and work, within and among tribes, within families of individuals, and between persons. Families misconceived by authoritarian parents as tribes to be ruled from the top down. When they’re meant to be incubators of individuality and originality, supported by parenting from the bottom up. Having to contend with per-versions of the power of attraction between opposites: the power of friction. That motivates ill will and drives conflict wherever the principle of Relationship is involved. Wherever Movement is involved, pulling it backwards and down. Toward the big picture that never was.
The way to go is forward. Up and out of here. Which is to say, to let go of ‘here.’ To free our thoughts of it so our minds can actually do what they’re able to do. To think with differentiation and empathy, the faculties of Mind that distinguish human-ape from ape. Whose purpose is to free us of our cages in a zoo if we can agree on the way things are. Without ‘conservatives’ and ‘realists’ getting in the way. Movement that in Reality is powered by attraction. The coming together of opposites to complement one another, not to annihilate one another.
Is this irrelevant? ‘Unrealistic?’ If it is then let the games begin!