Rufus Tales and a healthy dose of commentary on the sunset of the American plutocracy.

As I get older, I no long paint in precise brush strokes. My pallet of colors tends to run together. It becomes big globs of paint, mixes of colors, and just a messy Mélange of materials. Thus you will find posts like this one; a confused jumble of colors and textures.

Here I am going to post some long overdue stories of heroism, exceptional selfless actions and noteworthy behaviors. I do so while the United States oligarchy / plutocracy is staring the crack-up / collapse. Indeed, you cannot maintain a society that’s solely focused in farming the citizenry for every ounce of effort that they manage. You just cannot have a “for profit” society. It doesn’t work.

Society is about relationships.

It is NOT about money.

And any nation that “doesn’t get it”, that doesn’t understand that most simple concept needs to experience the ultimate collapse that it deserves.

Here-in lies the rub: Most people regardless of whatever kinds of intelligence they may possess simply cannot believe that the post-War USA is as draconian as it demonstrably is. You are correct, it would scramble their brains to consider it because deep down they have this unpleasant subconscious awareness that their trinket laden "way of life" hinges on a web of plutocracy.

In addition the means to control currency is really the bottom line.

It is simply a way to capture and monetize everything under the sun and this is exacly what the technocrats are fixing to do. Just listen to Uncle Claus, he's not one to mince words. And no, we are not allowed to leave.

"1) The Empire's policy is clear: nobody is allowed to opt out. Any success outside the system is an affront to the narrative and thus global hegemony. It is not allowed and, in fact, has been actively undermined by The Empire…an obvious and shameful point that faux patriots seem to gloss over.

2) Controlling the debt based money system allows The Empire to shamefully fund its extortive activities and give the illusion of abundance and all the consumer comforts that come with the illusion. It is hard to get anyone, including loved ones, to recognize the illusion. Too many are mesmerized by shiny things and refuse to see the moral\ethical imperative for opting out of the illusion as much as possible "

Granted I am not full of answers here, but one thing that is quite clear is that in order to "do it yourself" you need to be free of the various chokepoints that have been set up. Call me crazy, but listening to some of the vids done by Ice Age Farmer sheds light on how things could be shut down but quick! Start with food and take it from there.

-Posted by: Chevrus | Dec 17 2020 23:27 utc | 45

So here, in this post we are going to talk about being “the Rufus”. Which means to help others with no intention of profiting from it.

The videos are from China which is a nation that puts society over the individual and the self. This is in direct opposition of America that puts the individual (me, me, ME!) over society. It’s a matter of selfishness.

Service-for-myself.
Service-for-others.

I hope that you enjoy the videos and get something from them.

Why now?

Looking at all the hundreds of thousands of Americans standing in line waiting for handouts at charities across your country is disgusting and disturbing.
 
Watching YouTube videos of hundreds of thousands of people waiting in line to claim their food stamps less than a week away from Christmas is disgusting and disturbing.
 
Your country is disgusting and disturbing.

-Anonymous Coward

Have you been reading the (American) “news” lately?

A nation by merit

I am going to start this post with a video that helps describe what the leadership of China represents. No, it’s not a charismatic union organizer (Obama), a casino boss / mobster (Trump), a Texas Oil Billionaire (Bush), or a snake-oil salesman (Clinton)…

…they don’t get into the leadership positions by their connections, great PR promotion, or graft…

..or by conning the mindless multitudes (the mob rabble) to “vote” for you…

…they get there through merit. They get there through ability. They get there through a structured program of “hard knocks”. All those in leadership positions in China, not only were at the top of their class at the most difficult university to get into, but they also had to humble themselves working hard, demeaning jobs at poverty wages to fully appreciate what work is. It’s part of a long-duration program that grooms the Chinese leadership for the future.

The Chinese leadership are SALT.

Jolie does an excellent job as the action heroine. When Bruce Willis makes crash landings in the original “Die Hard” movie, at least he winces in pain and it takes him a few moments to regain composure. In “Salt”, when Angelina Jolie jumps consecutively onto six moving trucks on the freeway, she’s flying right up and instantly running at Olympic record pace, sort of like the original Terminator except sporting lipstick. Throughout the movie, she decks secret service agents faster than they can graduate out of combat training if she’s not pushing out of moving vehicles going 70 mph while wearing handcuffs, although the officers forgot to put the cuffs on behind her. **The idea is that she is a superbly trained heroine that is constantly underestimated.**

The next video is of a young Chinese boy.

The Chinese are taught to calculate and be the best that they can possibly be. Check out what he does. No, this is not a fun exercise that has no practical application in the “real world”, it is a skill of processing information, under stress and duress, and providing solutions.

When Mike Pompeo strutted into China with his neocon list of demands, his porky jowls jiggled in moist anticipation that China would be forced to kneel in front of him. But he did not anticipate, nor understand who he was dealing with. to this day; to this moment, most Americans and American leadership somehow think that the Chinese leadership is just a Chinese-speaking version of American leadership.

No, they are not. They are something else entirely.

Watch and learn.

But what good is this?

Americans would ask, “but how can you profit from this skill?”

But that is not the point.

In China, and the Chinese philosophy, people are part of a society, and they contribute to that society. It’s not the “lone wolf” that gobbles everything for themselves. If you have something to contribute, systems are put in place to benefit from your contributions.

America = “lone wolf” = Do things yourself, become a rich man or be a failure.
China = “part of a team” = Contribute, and share in the group profits or losses.

This young man demonstrates that he has impressive skills and abilities. Abilities and skills that can (eventually) be put to great use for the society, and his community as a whole. You can well understand that the leadership will put him in a training plan that will lead towards leadership positions so that he can do great things for the Chinese society as a whole.

In American, on the other hand, we are amused at his quirky skill. We see if we can use him to obtain money for ourselves, maybe put him on a talent show, and pay him a small stipend in the process.

Societal differences

The differences in the two societies; America compared to China can result in some interesting differences. One of the biggest is in helping others, and in the motivations why you would help someone. In America it has been (for all practical purposes) outlawed.

Consider America.

And of course, Americans ask what are the legal ramifications if they help someone…

Do bystanders have a responsibility to intervene in crimes …

We all have to look deep inside ourselves. Are we a Rufus? Or, are we Bystanders?

Saving a man from a fiery death

Here, in China, we have an average guy, a delivery man, who goes to save a man who had an accident and is on fire and probably dying…

Bad Guys and Good Guys

Here we have a bad man. He breaks something in a busy intersection. Instead of cleaning up his mess, he just rides off and leaves it for others to deal with. He is what we call an “asshole”.

Then we see cars and people drive past this mess. No one does anything. It just lays there inert, waiting to blow out someone’s tires, cause an accident or create havoc.

Then comes the Rufus…

Baby near death!

OMG! What happens when your tiny infant or young child is unresponsive. the poor thing is only one year old. They start turning blue and they cannot breathe! What are you going to do?

The man is a traffic cop, by the way.

It’s not all about money

From the two-minds blog…

When Social Capital Becomes More Valuable Than Financial Capital
December 17, 2020

This devaluation of financial wealth--and its transformation to a dangerous liability-- will reach extremes equal to the current extremes of wealth-income inequality.

Financial capital--money--is the Ring that rules them all. But could this power fall from grace? Continuing this week's discussion of the idea that that extremes lead to reversions, let's consider the bedrock presumption of the global economy, which is that money is the most valuable thing in the Universe because the owner of money can buy anything, as everything is for sale. The only question is the price.

Reversion to the mean is a statistical dynamic but it is also a human social dynamic: for example, once the social / financial / political pendulum reaches Gilded Age extremes of wealth/income inequality, the pendulum swings back. The more extreme the inequality, the greater the resulting extreme at the other end of the pendulum swing.

In the heyday of the postwar boom in the early 1960s, finance--banks, lending, mortgages, loans, investment banking, derivatives, futures, FX, all financial market trading, research firms, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc.--was about 5% of the economy. It now exceeds 20% of the economy, and its actual role and impact is much larger than 20%. Finance is now the dominant force in the economy in terms of wealth creation and influence.

(This parallels healthcare, which went from less than 5% of the economy to 20% in the same time span.)

While finance creates some jobs, it is essentially extractive: it produces no goods, it extracts wealth from the goods-producing economy via debt and speculation.

Thus a reversion that reduces finance back to 5% of the economy can be expected. How will this reversion to a much more constrained and modest role in the economy play out?

There is much to be said about such a complex and consequential process, but today I want to focus on one potential dynamic: the idea that social capital--our connections and loyalties to groups and other people--will become more valuable than financial wealth, i.e. "money."

The past 45 years can be characterized as the ascendance of finance: finance rules everything. Most people would say this has been true for all of human history, but it isn't quite so simple.

In many instances, loyalties, membership and devotion to causes far outweigh the influence of money. In periods of severe labor shortage, labor has more value that money, in the sense that labor sets the price of labor rather than capital setting the price.

This article caught my eye a few weeks ago: The Rich in New York Confront an Unfamiliar Word: No The pandemic is causing inequality to soar, but increasingly the privileged are discovering that they can't bend the world to their will.

The wealthy are accustomed to buying whatever they want with money, and the possibility that there might be limits on the power of money is shocking to them.

These limits might take political forms such as regulatory limits on what wealth can buy, they might take financial forms such as bans on certain speculative skims, and they might also take social forms, where people refuse to provide some good or service for cash because they've been reserved for family, friends or exchanges within trusted networks where membership cannot be purchased at any price.

Here is a simple example. Let's say I have an in-law unit adjacent to my house. It's been promised to a family member, and so when a prospective tenant offers me $1,000 a month to rent it, I decline.

In the unmoored, soulless world ruled by money, the prospective tenant reckons the "problem" (my refusal) can be solved with more money. So he offers me $1,500 a month. I decline, because the bonds of family are more important and valuable than a few more dollars.

The "problem" for the wealthy isn't money; the "problem" is that social ties, obligations and commitments are more valuable and binding than money.

The wealthy assume that "everyone has a price," a truism proven by Jeffery Epstein, who bought his way into Harvard, MIT, etc. with bundles of cash.

But as the status quo unravels, the wealthy will discover that not everyone can be bought. Indeed, accepting a big bribe might terminate all sorts of much more valuable connections.

The time has come when we need to place an emphasis on our place in society, our relationships, and our purposes in life. The soul-less pursuit of more and more “stuff” to prove how wealthy your are as an indicator of wealth not only generates and glorifies psychopaths, but it is (in itself) inherently dangerous.

Consider America…

…and the rest of the ‘West”.

The Wealthy have their own set of rules…

The poor have their own set of rules…

‘Punishment Without Crime’ Highlights The Injustice Of …
Man jailed for life over $20 marijuana sale – ABC
The death penalty: a punishment for the poor?
Fort Worth Shoplifter Gets Life In Prison – CBS Dallas
Anthony Crutcher is serving a 60-year sentence for selling $40 worth of cocaine.

You see, in America, your measure of value is how much money you have. If you are poor, or middle-class you are considered to be unimportant and disposable. If you are wealthy, you are considered to be significant and important. It’s a very clear distinction, and that is the way it is.

But that does not really matter in the big and real scale of things. This reality is associated with our current set of physical reality templates. And as such, knowing this, you all just must do your best with the “hand of cards that you have been dealt”.

A Rufus contributes and does his best no matter what!

Here we have another young man. A boy, actually, who has lost an arm. But that hasn’t stopped him. It’s not a limit on him, his ability or his dream. He pushes and he strives and he does his best no matter what.

What is stopping you?

How people in a healthy society work together

As I grew up in America there became a rising realization that if you tried to help someone you could get sued for doing so, you could end up braking some law, or rule or regulations and it would hurt you personally. So over the decades, Americans started to become less helpful of others, more self-centered, and more isolated for each other.

This was never healthy and is a sign of the decay of a culture.

"The “generous stranger” who spent over $500 on cookies so two Girl Scouts wouldn’t have to stand in the cold, has been arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency."

He violated FDA regulations.

Not so in China. You are part of a society and it is your duty to participate.

Take a look at this video and notice how everyone runs to help the man in distress. The run to help fro the East, from the South, from the North, and from the West. They all run to help. It’s what healthy societies and cultures do.

In America

This next video shows normal everyday citizens (members of the neighborhood) working together. And it takes place in America. Americans please (kindly) take note. This is how communities work. They work together.

A stranger arrives in their community. Whether he is associated with Antifa or the BLM is not specified, but he has left the urban enclave and entered the suburbia ring around the city. Inside his back pack are such things as duct-tape, wire ties, spray cans of black paint, flammable materials, fireworks and other similar items.

In an attempt to prevent the BLM riots from expanding outward from the urban centers, those that live in the suburbs have set up community groups to defend from the rioters, and the probing (recon) elements of the organizations that instigate the conflict.

Here we have one such interaction.

In my mind, when you work as part of a group, or a team, or participate in the defense of your community, you ARE a Rufus. For you are participating into something bigger and better than yourself, and you are not doing it for personal benefit, money or wealth.

A bad man

The world is filled with all sorts of people. Some are just angry and do some really bad things. Some are just idiots, or just terrible people. But what are you going to do when you meet them?

What are you going to do when they are tearing up your community, your life, and your neighborhood gas station? What are you going to do?

Are you going to stand back and call the police? Are you going to film it and post it on Facebook? Are you going to sent it to Twitter with a socially important hashtag, or are you going to drop everything and take action immediately?

Firing a guy in China

In America, over the last three decades, “letting someone go” has become so common that it has become part of the industrial / cultural landscape.

The core of Office Space is the absurdity of office life. Mike Judge’s  comedy wasn’t the first to seize on this, and the second-half of the  20th century is filled with examples of people feeling like meaningless  drones in a corporate existence that holds considerable sway over the  lives of individuals while also divorcing individuals from their  individuality. Peter (Ron Livingston) chooses to meet  absurdity with absurdity, becoming disconnected from a workplace that  has no connection to him. But through it all, Office Space has  just that—space. It’s a workplace that’s both uncaring and  unpredictable, but it also functions as a home station and place of  security (until Milton (Stephen Root) burns the building down).     

-Collider

While it is outrageously common in the United States, it is quite different inside of China. It is not so common in China. Aside from being against the law, there are procedures that a company must follow and strict rules on what they must pay you.

Here we have a worker being let go. He carries his clothing in his suitcase behind him. As all factory workers live inside the company dorms (typically). What we see is his boss putting one years salary in a cigarette box and gives it to him. This would never happen in the USA.

The last time I was let go was on Christmas eve, right before the Christmas luncheon. No severance pay or warning or anything like that. They gathered my gear and left it on the company stoop on the parking lot and had security escort me out.

The point of this is simple, you don’t need to be a hero saving people. You just need to be a decent human. You help others and you understand how they must feel and you help them. You don’t just spit on their CV and push them out the door, American style. You help them.

You be the Rufus in your every-day behaviors.

And for all my my long term MM readers, listen up! It will be your EVERY-DAY actions from which your will be judged upon. And yes, it’s not a religious fantasy. YOU. WILL. NEED. TO. ANSWER. FOR. YOUR. BEHAVIORS.

Speaking of the movie “Office Space”, there’s been a major shift in the American working “lifestyle” since that movie came out…

Twenty years later, offices haven’t gone anywhere, but our economy has drastically transformed. When Office Space was released, we were in the middle of the dot-com bubble, which didn’t burst until 2000, so Office Space is a story told in relative security. Peter’s job sucks, but he has a job. The question isn’t “Can we get work?” but “What is the quality of our work life?” The job is a given, and, being that it’s a 40-hour-per-week office job, Peter presumably has healthcare benefits and so forth. The film’s conflict and comedy comes from Peter rebelling against his workspace. But what happens when that workspace is no longer a given?

Office Space isn’t unrecognizable twenty years after its release, but we’re in a far different world. We’ve gone through the Great Recession and an economy transformed by the Internet in a way that was only beginning to surface in the late 90s. Initech, Peter’s company, would likely have been absorbed into a larger tech giant, and for the part of writer-director Judge, he’s gone on to explore that world in his HBO series Silicon Valley. But that show tends to explore the working world from the top down. We see it from the hustling creators of Pied Piper to the buffoons leading tech giants like “Hooli” (i.e. Google). Rarely do we see the lives of the working drones, and even if we did, it would be more specific to the Silicon Valley lifestyle.

What hasn’t really been explored is how the gig economy has transformed the lives of the modern worker. You have huge companies like Uber, AirBnB, and others technically letting the individual run their own hours, but it’s the crushing life of a freelancer who’s been abused by an indifferent system. Once again, you have the clash of the individual against the corporate life except the setting has left the office and moved into an individual’s home, car, and anything else they could possibly use for even the slightest profit while a tech giant reaps most of the rewards.

There’s definitely room here for the dark, absurd comedy that Office Space provided because while Judge’s follow-up film, Idiocracy, tends to be cited more and more, there are definitely lessons to be had from Office Space and its rebellion against a monolithic and random culture. In the world of Office Space, you can devote years of your life to a company, be laid off unceremoniously by people who don’t know you, try to commit suicide, decide against suicide at the last minute, and then get hit by a drunk driver, which results in serious injury but also a seven-figure settlement. The illusion of control that the office job—and really any job—provides, would fit nicely to the setting of the gig economy.

Of course, you can’t really call it “Office” Space without the office, and that’s okay. While the setting was obviously essential to the 1999 comedy, the larger story is one of workplace malaise and frustration. The inanity Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) has to suffer through is just as mind-numbing and ridiculous even though she works in the service industry and Peter works in information technology. The workplace is the problem, and I’d love to see a story that shows how that problem evolves when the workplace is your life rather than something you can leave at the office.

-Collider

Rescue of a child in distress.

Here we have a traffic cop, a policeman that basically helps resolve fender benders, and traffic accidents, answering the cries of a mother in distress. Her cries of terror is heart-rendering. The anguish is real.

But watch what happens.

The Rufus shows compassion

Compassion and understanding are in short order today.

The West has tossed those elements of the human nature into the trash bin, and have instead embraced a belief that the amount of money that you accumulate is a measure of your success in life. Just look at the articles in the American “news” media. It’s all about the super-rich and the super wealthy. Very few articles are about people who don’t earn a few million dollars per year.

Yet…

Yet when their physical body dies, and the consciousness goes from the particle form to the wave form, and they are out there roaming in the non-physical realm, they will have to answer for their behaviors. And in that realm, the new swimming pool in their third mansion, or how they bought a fruit basket to their house maid is not going to “cut it”.

We are measured by who we are and what we do and how we treat each other. (And something else, covered later on, in this post…)

Like the humanity that is displayed in this teacher….

It is all about watching heroic actions or is something else more important here?

Ah yes. It’s great to watch heroes in action, isn’t it? But it’s not just that. Please gauge your reactions to watching the videos. How do you feel?

Do you feel pride in that someone did the “right thing”?
Or did you feel repulsion that someone was a “sucker”?

That, I strongly believe, is determined from where you come from. If you are from the “dog eat dog” streets of New York City, you might feel differently than say a person who was raised on the corn-fields of Iowa.

That should be somewhat obvious.

But is it just urban vs. rural experiences, or is it something deeper?

Or, in other words, would a person from the mega-city of Shenzhen China (14 million people), have a similar reaction to a person from the metropolis of New York City (5 million people)?

I argue that there is something much more complex going on, than the density of population where you live, having an impact on your societal behaviors.

It makes me think.

Contemporaneous Chinese POP music

Yeah. I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I believe that the music of a nation is a reflection of it’s society. And China, being a nation of nerds, that maintain an existence within a firmly specified society has their own types and styles of music that reflects these characteristics.

You can probably discount my thoughts in this matter. But you cannot deny that there is a significant difference between American music videos and Chinese, or Indian, or Japanese for that matter. I like to believe that it is due to culture and society, but to nail down the exact elements remains elusive.

Lets look at this.

There's so many different types of songs and musical styles. How in heck can you use them to illustrate that cultural and societal differences can become a window towards the way Rufus behaviors manifest?

First up – 张韶涵 – 破茧

This is so very Chinese, and there’s so many elements involved that you just need to see it yourself to try to figure out what is going on here.

Can you figure it out?

I can’t. It seems to be a complex, boy and girl relationship along with a society of friends. Friends that are fighting forces that threaten their happiness – kind of thingy.

It’s so hard to sort out. But, over all I see a theme of relationships, friendships, working together, and fighting against something or someone that threatens their lifestyle.

…Pretty universal.

Or is it?

南征北战NZBZ – 穿越 (Live)

What makes all this difficult to sort out is that music videos are about all sorts of things. And you just cannot point to one or two and say that that is what the culture represents. For instance, here is a MV from a Chinese rap group (you probably didn’t know that they existed) singing about…

I don’t know…

…life?

Here’s the dangerous three man rap group called NZBZ. (NZBZ = 南征北战). The song is called 穿越.

You can probably recognize the English words and phrases being used.

I think, but I could be terribly wrong, that it is a celebration of being who you are. Or something along those lines. More or less.

More…

…or less.

陈雪凝 – 绿色

This chick is one of the top pop artists of 2019 into 2020. She’s a Shenzhen girl as you can tell by the backgrounds in the video. This is one of her most famous songs. It’s about …

…well, you all try to figure it out.

Lyrics are HERE.

若不是你突然闯进我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞放任了
 说不痛苦那是假的
 毕竟我的心也是肉做的
 你离开时我心里的彩虹
 就变成灰色
 说不心酸那是假的
 如果我真的没那么爱过
 爱着一个没有灵魂的人
 世界都是黑色
 若不是你突然闯进 我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞 放任了
 爱我的话你都说
 爱我的事你不做
 我却把甜言蜜语
 当做你爱我的躯壳
 你的悲伤难过我不参破
 我也会把曾经的且过 当施舍
 不去计较你太多
 从此你在我心里
 只剩绿色
 说很快活那是假的
 你的名字依然那么深刻
 每个字都刺穿我的心脏
 那鲜明的痛是红色
 若不是你突然闯进 我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞 放任了
 爱我的话你都说
 爱我的事你不做
 我却把甜言蜜语
 当做你爱我的躯壳
 你的悲伤难过我不参破
 我也会把曾经的且过 当施舍
 不去计较你太多
 从此你在我心里
 只剩绿色
 呼
 若不是你突然闯进 我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞 放任了
 爱我的话你都说
 爱我的事你不做
 我却把甜言蜜语
 当做你爱我的躯壳
 若不是你突然闯进 我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞 放任了
 爱我的话你都说
 爱我的事你不做
 我却把甜言蜜语
 当做你爱我的躯壳
 你的悲伤难过我不参破
 我也会把曾经的且过 当施舍
 若不是你突然闯进 我生活
 我怎会把死守的寂寞 放任了
 爱我的话你都说
 爱我的事你不做
 我却把甜言蜜语
 当做你爱我的躯壳

And a raw translation…

If it hadn’t been for you breaking into my life
How can I let go of the loneliness of death?
It’s false to say no pain
After all, my heart is made of meat
The rainbow in my heart when you left
it turns gray
It’s false to say no
If I really didn’t love it that much
Love a man without a soul
The world is black
If you hadn’t suddenly broken into my life
How can I let go of the loneliness of death?

Love me and you’ll say it all
Love me for things you don’t do