Disquiet

[jfz9580m]

My existence has been wretchedly chaotic in the last 14 years. I am wrapping up a research article I started 17 years ago. In this period, I got (amicably) divorced, moved back to my home country India from the US and lost my mother to cancer, which I have only recently gotten over. I am an only child and my mom and I were very close. It was a shock when we lost her.

As a result of the circumstances under which all this happened my mind has not been at rest. Anything I write is less about catharsis than explicitly political. Therefore, rather than to a therapist (an American concept I never quite took to), I thought I would start writing in this rather quiet forum on DU.

Political to me does not connote noisily spectacular. If anything, quite the reverse.
But writing out my side of things like Frankenstein’s monster (I saw the new movie recently - it was not too bad as such things go), in a measured way seems like a better plan at this point than attempting (and unsuccessfully) to repress all thoughts of the period from Sept 2011-the present.

I shall try that..

[jfz9580m]

1. Parasitism not Progress is the Issue - 1

That is a snapshot of Ol’jfz9580m’s work desk I took yesterday for posting here.

I write these for myself alone.

I laugh at my own jokes so I have finally returned to my native state of if not solipsism, a state where a few lapses into vaguely menacing noises aside (an undertone throughout), “performing” for an audience of only one as is the norm for Ol’jfz9580m. That one being Ol’ jfz9580m.

Going forward I shall refer to myself in third person as Ol’ jfz9580m in satirical non homage to Ol’ Orlick from Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations”.

My mom and I used to find a particular line from the book very funny: “You was favored and Ol’ Orlick was bullied and beat”. You would have to read the book to get why it is absurd.

To quote P. G. Wodehouse, another favorite of my mom and I, “to make it clear to the meanest intelligence”, Ol’ Orlick was not a meek victim. He was some sort of dim-witted thug. Hence, clearly an affinity of Ol’jfz9580m.

I suppose much like Winston from 1984, I write these for a distant future I will never see. I have no descendants either, a couple of nieces I am very fond of aside. So Ol’jfz9580m has to communicate to the distant future about what life was like.



In that image future human from 2568, in the corner you can see a sheet of 10 mg cetzine tablets, some tinsel that my 200 mg and 100 mg Modafinil tablets were wrapped in (I should clean my desk at some point), a cake of soap proving that I do have an understanding of hygiene whatever asparagus may be cast my way on that head possibly occasionally with some legitimacy (I have been preoccupied! There is a doctor who recommends never showering fwiw? No. Oh well..), and my medical marijuana prescription that contains both THC and CBD.

It is a nice snapshot of human existence in India in these troubled times as I owe the people whose produce of bonafide utility I relied on in this difficult time.

I am indebted to a small local pharmacy for these, since the local mental health services have been unhelpful or worse. They have been known to us for over 20 years and Modafinil is a safe enough medication that they do not insist on a prescription. My life would have been far harder without Modafinil.

I am very grateful to my ayurvedic doctor and my medical marijuana company for my marijuana presciption as well. It has helped me quit alcohol which I really should avoid given how much cancer there is in my family.

There is no data I am willing to share for medical or any research now or wrt the last 14.5 years. It was not always the case. It is today. I found out last week about Blackstone Inc and am preparing for conflict on all fronts.

The Texas cadaver scandal is one I noted with interest. Toronto shutting down Sidewalks Lab was also a relevant news story. A third news story that is relevant involved the Serum Institute of India throwing a draconian retaliatory lawsuit at a volunteer who dared complain and sue them for a modest sum of 5 lakhs. In a society with good critical thinking skills that would be construed by no one as an attack on vaccines, but rather on the type of human who thrives in this world as it accelerates to hell disregarding collateral damage and bullying and scamming their way ahead. SIL filed a 100 crore lawsuit or something ridiculous as a form of serious intimidation. That is one side of India. A small but significant one.
And as someone who does not grasp notions like kayfabe, if I formally place criminal liability on the table for some things I have seen, it is neither insanity nor theatre. I have no use for theatre and I have seen more than enough.
One person is already dead - my mom. And I lost 14.5 years of my life.
I would not be writing this were it an ordinary situation. The rest of what I write is for a future I hope exists some day.

A parasitic private equity company called Blackstone Inc has been buying up some of the already fairly sleazy local hospitals since 2023. The doctors here are always good - physical health doctors anyway. My oncologist is a gem of a man. Overworked but then it is easier to overpopulate earth and force parasitic bullshit jobs offering no serious goods or services as a form of “GDP Growth”, than to train highly skilled doctors with expertise and experience.

My mom’s oncology nurse was also very competent (and overworked and as nurses typically are, underpaid). Blackstone Inc however does well. Hence, the title of the post.

As someone who will never work in anything but publicly funded science and is a complaint forced to use the web as a Citizen scientist would, I have no reason to lie and I will not any further. The last 14 years have taken a real toll on me and my family and friends and doctors and colleagues at various points.

The forces affecting our lives are hidden and indirect and chaos and confusion make it hard to identify precisely every culprit. But I do speculate about some.

For some reason I have had pastor Marian Budde in mind as I write this.

I am nominally Hindu, the doctor, the ceo of my medical marijuana company, my pharmacist at a small mom and pop local pharmacy, its owner etc are Hindu, Muslim, Christian etc.
They are all Indian men and very decent and kind men.

There are few Jewish people or Sikhs in these parts or I am sure they would have been an important part of my real life here as well.

As we say in these parts, “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai milkar Janagan gaate hain” (though I can’t remember offhand where that is from..Ol’jfz9580m has always had a lousy memory. Mainly thanks to never have trained attention and memory early on. Ol’ jfz9580m’s metacognition works somewhat differently than some people’s).

There and four books I purchased with poor grace from one of those ugly giants. I would have preferred a small bookseller, but those do not exist anymore online anyway.
As this mad rush for the most parasitic forms of growth prevails, that can be expected.

My residence however is very much my own as is the street outside and the sky above. We have lived on this piece of land for over a 150 years. That is not that long. But it is long enough.

The title of the post derives from one of the books pictured, Samuel Miller MacDonald’s “Progress”. It is a good book and I like Sam.

But I disagree with the problem he identified. Firstly it is never possible to identify one concept alone as he has done for such a mess. But were I to pick one, I would choose Adam Becker’s allusion to “the limits to growth” as closer.

But I have been plagued as most people are these days (whether they are aware or not - I was not 14 years ago) by something directly insidious.

While it is not any one thing, parasitism (with cruelty, bullying, misrepresentation, coercion, intimidation and slander as needed to support parasitism and by large crowds of truly endlessly clueless humans who to this day do not get it) is a far bigger issue than any in my own life as well as society broadly.
Earth and its animals who do not vote and are not cute companions have faced the brunt of this parasitism in 200 years of industrialization. That the euphemistically titles “ventilation shutdown” - a moral abomination that most veterinarians disgracefully back -refers to “efficient culling” of animals by burning them alive after factory farming them in cages too small to allow even the most meagre amounts of comfort tells one a lot about the zeitgeist of this society.
In such a landscape war and poverty are expected not surprising and sports style blame allotment and chess moves cannot change that. I feel rather Biblical these days..Not like a theocrat. But as a human who cannot conceal their disapproval any further or indulge in meaningless twaddle and drivel.

To be continued..