Across the US, drinking rates have plunged to their lowest level in 90 years.
Only 54 percent of adults said they had a drink last month, according to Gallup data.
That’s the lowest level since the polling group began collecting the figures in 1939.
Only 46 percent of Republican voters reported having any alcohol in all of last year, a one third drop from 2023.
By comparison Democrat drinkers only decline by five percent in the same period.
‘Americans’ drinking habits are shifting amid the medical world’s reappraisal of alcohol’s health effects,’ Gallup said of the findings.
‘After decades of relative steadiness in the proportion of US adults who drink, [we have] documented three consecutive years of decline in the US drinking rate as research supporting the ‘no amount of alcohol is safe’ message mounts.’
Listening to the ranting of a friend who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), I am struck by two things:
he gives reasons for his anger
his reasoning or abstract understanding of his predicament is ridiculous
(His rant was recorded and sent to me by a third party who is trying to help.)
With that as a starting point, consider the various ways abstract reasoning or solid abstract paradigms can compensate for or mask mental illness. Not all of it is pretty.
For example, serial killers often mask their illnesses for decades by holding fast to the appearance of normalcy while secretly indulging their madness.
Less bad are career criminals who act with savagery in less direct ways, through hit men, poisons, theft, fraud, and so on.
There is a wide spectrum between serial killers and normally inoffensive people.
It is reasonable to see all cultures as fundamentally abstract paradigms that mask and allow for madness among large groups of people.
A culture, after all, is nothing more than a Lowest-Common-Denominator system of communication; an LCD semiology. Consider how many cultures are grotesquely narcissistic.
Personality is much the same whether it conforms well or not to whichever cultural semiology it inhabits.
From this point of view, enshrining diversity only ensures a wider array of mad people. Identity politics is the same; just more ways for mad people to function, more room for them to run free; more abstract paradigms to mask their underlying chaos.
That is a decent modern restatement of the First and Second Noble Truths: life is suffering because we are crazy.
The Third and Fourth Noble Truths tell us that the way out of being crazy is to use our reason better; to understand why we are crazy; that clinging to LCD semiologies can’t ever work.
A philosophical psychologist might rightly say that a mad mind open to reason will gradually become well.
My friend with BPD can reason, but his reasoning is really bad. It’s selfish, marinated in anger, and not open to contrary views. But even he can do it if he clings to reason and evidence.
Abstract reasoning and paradigms such as Buddhism, science, other religions, atheism, psychology, or philosophy can lead us out of madness if we use them diligently.
Diligence or perseverance is one of the most important virtues in Buddhist practice. Wisdom is the most important. Compassion is probably the most famous Buddhist virtue but compassion without wisdom or diligence is not good and can even be dangerous.
Indeed, my BPD friend frequently and loudly demands unreasonable compassion from others. And that is one of the most obvious flaws in the way he thinks about himself, the way he reasons.
The Press Conference on Crime and “Beautification” will be held tomorrow, at 10:00 A.M. EST, in the Press Briefing Room, and it will not only involve ending the Crime, Murder, and Death in our Nation’s Capital, but will also be about Cleanliness and the General Physical Renovation and Condition of our once beautiful and well maintained Capital. We are not going to allow people to spend $3.1 Billion Dollars on fixing up a building, like the Federal Reserve, which could have been done in a far more elegant and time sensitive manner for $50 to $100 Million Dollars. The Renovation would have actually been better, and we would have saved $3 Billion Dollars, Traffic Jams, and never-ending Construction. The Mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive. The American Public is not going to put up with it any longer. Just like I took care of the Border, where you had ZERO Illegals coming across last month, from millions the year before, I will take care of our cherished Capital, and we will make it, truly, GREAT AGAIN! Before the tents, squalor, filth, and Crime, it was the most beautiful Capital in the World. It will soon be that again. Thank you for your attention to this matter — See you tomorrow at 10 A.M.!
Take this video as a semblance of an explication of Buddhism; then understand and use FIML when speaking to at least one other person. That’s where and how FIML fits in the human aspect of the cosmos. There is no better way for humans to communicate interpersonal subjective and objective reality. ABN
The sudden popularity of these dance routines is signaling a significant change in USA society; it’s a healthy sign. Our beautiful damsels are awakening. ABN
The deal calls for the creation of a 20-mile transit corridor, modestly labeled the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity,” that will allow Azerbaijanis direct access to their country’s westernmost region, explained Hudson Institute senior fellow Luke Coffey.
“If you look at a map of Azerbaijan, it’s in two chunks — you have Azerbaijan proper and then there’s Nakhchivan, which is an enclave,” Coffey said. “Think of it like the United States and Alaska, but instead of having Canada in between, you have Armenia.”
American Buddhist Net 