In the wake of economic reform

In the wake of a quarter century of root and branch neo-liberal economic re-engineering of whole society I have been asked to reflect on the prospects for a renewal of nation-building today.

Does a long-term relationship kill romantic love?

The conclusion of "Does a long-term relationship kill romantic love?" is in line with previous research findings: In an overwhelming majority of cases (from 6 of 7 to 9 of 10 couples) romantic love completely disappears. These findings relate to sexually monogamous couples.


Three types of love are identified:

Eros / Romantic love (intensity, sexual interest, and engagement)

Mania / Passionate love (romantic love with obsession) 

Storge / Companionate love (warm, less intense love, devoid of attraction and sexual desire.)

The chronologic sequence and research findings (My comments in parenthesis):

Passionate love - (This gets the couple together.) If it doesn't end soon enough, relationship satisfaction is decreased. Too much drama for the long-term.

Romantic love - (This builds and maintains the pair bond.) It declines later in all cases, but for 1 of 8 couples it remains high enough to maintain sexual interest and therefore continue.

Companionate love - Also called "friend love." Satisfaction with the relationship is lower than with romantic love. (This is where an overwhelming majority of marriages end up under the monogamy for life / one-and-only plan.)

From the paper:

Conclusion

Contrary to what has been widely believed, long-term romantic love (with intensity, sexual interest, and engagement, but without the obsessive element common in new relationships), appears to be a real phenomenon that may be enhancing to individuals’ lives— positively intense long-term romantic love sets a standard that couples (and marital therapists) can strive for that is higher than seems to have been generally considered realistic. This could also be distressing for long-term couples who have achieved a kind of contented, even happy—but not intensely romantic—status quo, assuming it is the best anyone can expect. Couples benefit from downward social comparison with other couples and will even distort their evaluation of their own relationship to an objectively unrealistically positive view.

These last two sentences may explain the more extreme resistance to polyamory often seen:

86% in the USA consider poly to be morally wrong.

Mexico's 'Holy Death' cult growing

A cult which reveres death is growing rapidly in Mexico and its influence is now spreading to neighbouring countries including the US.

Global warming movement is merely a front for the religion of death

As we have exhaustively documented, the global warming movement is merely a front for the religion of death – neo-eugenics – and the agenda to impose draconian population control measures and eco-fascism in the name of saving the earth.

Leaders of this new cult include people like Finnish environmentalist guru Pentti Linkola, who has called for climate change deniers be “re-educated” in eco-gulags and that the vast majority of humans be killed with the rest enslaved and controlled by a green police state, with people forcibly sterilized, cars confiscated and travel restricted to members of the elite.

Linkola would feverishly enjoy using the red button depicted in the climate ad to liquidate skeptics, since he once observed that another world war would be “a happy occasion for the planet” because it would eradicate tens of millions of people.

As we have documented, although not going quite as far as Linkola, the eco-fascist movement is attracting prominent advocates, including James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis. Lovelock told the Guardian earlier this yearthat “democracy must be put on hold” to combat global warming and that “a few people with authority” should be allowed to run the planet.

This sentiment was echoed by author and environmentalist Keith Farnish, who in a recent book called for acts of sabotage and environmental terrorism in blowing up dams and demolishing cities in order to return the planet to the agrarian age. Prominent NASA global warming alarmist and Al Gore ally Dr. James Hansen endorsed Farnish’s book.

Another prominent figure in the climate change debate who exemplifies the violent and death-obsessed belief system of the movement is Dr. Eric R. Pianka, an American biologist based at the University of Texas in Austin. During a speech to the Texas Academy of Science in March 2006, Pianka advocated the need to exterminate 90% of the world’s population through the airborne ebola virus. The reaction from scores of top scientists and professors in attendance was not one of shock or revulsion – they stood and applauded Pianka’s call for mass genocide.

The current White House science czar John P. Holdren also advocates the most obscenely dictatorial, eco-fascist, and inhumane practices in the name of environmentalism. In his 1977 Ecoscience textbook, Holdren calls for a “planetary regime” to carry out forced abortions and mandatory sterilization procedures, as well as drugging the water supply, in an effort to cull the human surplus.