Chapter 4
Jennifer asked them all to get together for a bit of exercise because they would not be outside the shelter for a few more days. She got Susan out of the bedroom saying some exercise would do her good and she started going through some exercises with them. Lisa had to get her mind off Dave.
They got the bow and arrow out next to do some target shooting. Lisa asked Emma if she knew anything about bows and she said that she didn't but had used a small one a few times.
Lisa taught Emma how to stand and aim with their smaller bow and gave her some practice shots while coaching her. Susan and Jennifer tended to the gardens and cleaned the dishes from breakfast. A while later and they all started taking turns with bow shots and keeping score. Emma was OK that she had come in last place with the scoring. She said "I'm used to losing all the time to my family anyway since I'm always the youngest." Lisa added that winners are made from people who tried new things and lost at them until they learned. Emma looked at her and said "I'm not seven.".
Lisa got the table tennis set out and played with Emma who consistently beat her while the rest sat around and watched. Bob had decided to excuse himself to watch the video monitor while everyone was making so much noise.
They later decided to take turns bathing while watching some TV since they were all getting rancid. They heated water in the microwave and poured it into the cold water of the tub to bathe in warm water.
After they had all bathed and changed, Susan collected their dirty clothes and hand washed them in the bathroom basin and started dinner.
Lisa sat down to review the recorded video of the day while the others went into the living room area and relaxed and drank more pine needle tea. She commented that the dogs were getting even more viscous and more numerous after quickly reviewing the video footage and joining the rest of them.
Susan later retired to her room. Everyone could see she was depressed about losing Joe and having shot the woman but she did not burden anyone with it.
The rest of them sat around and listened to Emma talk about her family and what she studied in home schooling. She knew a lot about the law which surprised them. It was a totally different, simpler and more logical way of looking at morality than the philosophers they had sometimes read and talked about. Emma talked about singularities in morality that were used to discredit any ideas about absolute moral laws and said her brother had even said that science had bigger singularities than the ones found in moral laws and everyone ignored them pretending science was perfect. Bob said that her brother was right about science, but that science was God for progressive governments that were in power around most of the world. He said "Governments transfer power to themselves by pushing science as having all the answers. The scientists were on government payrolls as university professors.".
"Singularities?" Lisa asked "Things that never happen and that we don't understand when we think about them, such as the Trolley Car problem where you have to kill one person to save three and if you should do it or not." she answered. She stopped for a moment and went on "The Trolley Car problem is something that never happens and our laws aren't sufficient if it ever does. It gets used to show that moral laws are not absolute and to discredit any and all moral laws, but science has the same kind of problems.". Jennifer laughed and said "So does mathematics"* and Bob laughed along with her. *Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem
Emma had questions for Lisa about what it was like to run a car lot and Lisa explained that she went around to car auctions and bought lots of cars where they were available for a small amount of money and displayed them in the city so people could look at them and pick which ones they wanted. Lisa sold them cars for more money than what she paid for them to make a profit and use the profit to pay for her food, bills and house as well as two other employees that she had working for her. She explained that she made it easier for people to buy cars and made a profit for providing that service.
She explained that it wasn't easy and that she had to know what people wanted to be good at it and that there was a lot of people trying to do the same thing. She explained that competition was the cornerstone of free market capitalism and kept prices low and the service good for people who bought cars. It made everyone free, if they wanted to, they could work hard at their jobs and buy nice cars, or they could have other priorities.
Lisa said some people worked too hard for pride and greed, two of the seven deadly sins and these sins made them weak and stupid and that they could easily be fooled even though they looked and acted smart and had lots of money that came from from hard work. She said the world was getting complicated and required people to think outside their box and understand that they had moral and ethical responsibilities that had not been dictated to them by their governments or made part of their occupations. "This was the central problem in the powered world", she explained.
She explained that the world was changing before the power went out and that the people who called themselves Progressives didn't want people competing to provide services because that made people strong and smart. Progressives wanted to give people who didn't want to work everything and take it away from people who worked so they could control everything. She explained that the monetary system let politicians give money away to the poor and the uber rich before taking it from the people who actually worked to generate wealth. Politicians could simply borrow whatever they wanted from the private banks while leaving those whom they represented to pay back the loans plus interest. It was a win-win system for the banks and the peoples representatives. "Only the people, the voting public lost", she added.
"The people lost on three counts" she said, and went on to explain that when a capital works project takes place, workers are removed from the economy, reducing competition and raising prices because they had to be fed and housed. This was the true cost but only one of three counts. A second count was for the fact that the people who did the project were paid with debt money, the money they earned was owed to the private banks by tax payers and by them and was equal to the value of the project. The loan was paid back by taxes. "It's as if the banks did all the work" she said and added "We had to work in order to work to create useful things instead of just working once on the creation. The third count was the additional interest that would be charged on these loans. The people were always three time losers to their representatives in the powered economy under the debt monetary system we had.".
"Progressivism," she added "was the idea that some men can direct the development of mankind, that there are no transcendent principles to live by, no God and that the future always justified actions that violated basic moral principles that people knew in their hearts.". She explained that the Progressives wanted to upset the existing moral order of things, including consciousness itself, the very idea of right and wrong, to find a better way for humanity to better serve a ruling class while keeping the appearance of protecting the environment and the downtrodden.
"Who made up Progressivism", Emma asked "The banks of course" Lisa responded. "With their think tanks" she added.
"They were using us as their servants and setting aside the fact that we own our own lives and that they have no legitimate claim on our lives. In their minds, their ends justified their means.".
She explained that this was not understood by lower level minions and corruption from moral decay that this created wore away at their souls but they were victims of pride and wanted to be like everyone else rather than do things that they knew were morally right.
Lisa went on to explain that there was very little competition in the powered economy because the big companies lobbied governments to create more and more rules and regulations to prevent new companies from starting up. The super rich people that owned big companies were afraid of competition*. She explained that corporate lobbying gave politicians money to win re-elections and that most people didn't have enough time to really consider who they would vote for and why because they were so busy working hard just to ma
ke a living or to keep up with their friends, neighbors and relatives. *"competition is a sin", J.D. Rockefeller
The people who didn't work always voted for governments that promised to give them something for nothing. Lots of people got something for nothing on borrowed money that working people would have to pay back, plus the interest. Lots of people, both poor and the uber rich had needs that outstripped their abilities and expected others to make up the difference with their work. She said they were the children of the new society that was emerging. She explained that the differences between adults and children were slowly disappearing, just like the differences between men and women and boys and girls. Everyone was becoming child-like and androgynous.
Super rich people liked these governments because they didn't actually work, they just helped these governments get elected by donating a small amount of their money for elections in exchange for political favors which was usually larger amounts of money in the form of grants, big contracts that no one else could bid on, or regulations that were made to help them at the expense of the smaller companies that had to compete with them. She explained that most of the economy was called "crony capitalism" and that it didn't bear any resemblance to real capitalism or free markets.
There were young people in the city called green hippies and they didn't think they liked capitalism but what they really didn't like was crony capitalism. They didn't really understand capitalism because they were not taught about it in school and had never never seen a real free market society, not even on TV. "Especially not on TV" she added.
She said that the government schools were really just there to babysit kids while their parents work and get their money taken from them by government who gave it to their friends. A lot of people were young and unhappy and had little hope for a future so they smoked a lot of marijuana and drank a lot of alcohol and that made them stupid and easily fooled into thinking they knew about things they had not yet the time to be well studied and to understand.
Emma asked her what socialism was and Lisa explained that socialism was a science that was born from crony capitalism and that both things really meant the same thing. The crony capitalists gave some of their money to universities so that their science of managing everyone could be studied, justified, refined and perfected by the professors. They called it socialism because it sounded more honest and scientific. She said "I guess the brain washing of a lot of young people is why your dad took you out of school and doesn't want you going into the city alone.".
She explained that they had a movie she could watch called "The Money Masters" that explained how banking was done to distort and control the economy with private banks creating money to lend to governments to spend then take it back plus interest in the form of phoney taxes after it was already spent.
People having too much money would permit them to take time off work and have spare time to learn and think about moral responsibility and how they operated within society. They had to keep everyone in some kind of fear, economic from falling behind their class and friends, or to busy keeping food on the table and mortgages paid. Friends of governments collected the interest on the loans and used their wealth to control the governments.
She explained that the private banks print the money and manage the economy using a science called Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics would be the only type of economic system normally taught in government schools and that schools were rarely allowed to teach anything else. If they did, the crony capitalists would stop sending the professors grants for research that they depended on to make a comfortable living.
"People basically got their information and opinions from the news and the media which was controlled by the banks who created the money to lend to governments and control the economy." she said.
Bob added that the model for society was changing from a central bank war economy to a green economy where people would pay taxes for putting carbon dioxide into the air. "Its another scam, there is only trace amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is good for plants and therefore good for the environment and people. They call it a greenhouse gas but have never been able to correlate greenhouse gas emissions with global warming.". He stopped and added "Its like the earlier attempts by the British Empire to tax sunlight. That's why you see old buildings in England with little tiny windows.".
Lisa explained that the new international trade systems would make people weak and stupid and that if they continued to import goods from Red China and have the Chinese slaves do all the work, everyone in the States would have forgotten how to make things. The economy would have died and the Red Chinese would have stop giving them things unless they gave up their land and natural resources, since they wouldn't have anything else to sell. She went on to explain that even if the banks kept lending more money, still no one would know how to work for it so it would be worthless. It wouldn't buy anything.
"Economically useless people in a society where efficiency is worshiped would have soon been disposed of. People's lives had revolved around their jobs even in a society that should have been based on leisure if technological development was to serve all of mankind. People were learning to work harder and harder and to hate the inefficient or the ones that didn't fit in the box.". She added, then said "Work was life. Life was work.".
Emma was shocked "disposed of?" Lisa responded "You have read history books, haven't you Emma?". Emma went quiet for a moment. Lisa added "Of course it could have happened here, it would be stupid to think otherwise, especially since it had happened almost everywhere else in history, including North America with the natives.". Jennifer added "Concentration camps were invented by the British during the Boer war.".
She explained that a lot of young people in the city thought people were bad for the planet and that the population needed to be reduced by up to ninety five percent. Emma looked at her, eyes wide open, and asked who the hippies wanted to kill and Lisa explained that some wanted everybody to be dead, even themselves, so the earth would survive. "They thought the earth is alive?" she asked. Lisa replied "Right. It was a religion.".
Emma was surprised to hear this and wanted to know how that could happen and Lisa explained that they were ideas they get taught when they are very young. They get repeated all the time in the public schools and on TV so eventually they just believe it because no one tells them otherwise. Their parents are too busy working to explain all this and they are tired at night from working so hard and many don't understand it themselves. Some of them don't know because they are busy working and believe they are smart because they went to school, work hard and have money and therefore could not be fooled but they are the biggest victims of propaganda*. *Propaganda: The Shaping Of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul
She explained that a lot of ordinary people thought they were actually members of the ruling classes and would be spared from the eventual effects of what the environmentalists wanted. They went along with it all even though they knew that it was silly and ridiculous. People could be made to think that way with secret handshakes, ceremonies, rings, oaths, symbols and societies or if they just believed that they were special or indispensable. "Or they just wanted to keep their government jobs." Bob added.
She explained that people had lost happiness and had used pleasure as a substitute for happiness in the powered society and this made them weak and unwise. "Clever but stupid"* was a phrase used in the key academic papers. *Dialectic Of Enlightenment (Theodore Adorno and Max Horkimer, 'Frankfurt School')
She went on to explain that technology was evolving and large numbers of people would no longer be required for work so much and that they couldn't cut the work week back because people would have time and energy to learn about how they were being tricked and figure out what they could do about it. She said that this is why they wanted to keep populations low and they did this with things like wars and birth control and by making the hippies think people were bad for the planet and to not have kids. Everyone had to either be busy worki
ng or sedentary and powerless.
Emma said "This all sounds like they want to control everyone and keep the knowledge to themselves like in The Republic Of Plato. My dad got me to read that and said that he would explain more about it as I got older and that it was a really important book for people to read.".
Lisa said that the Bible was really about some of the stuff she was telling her and sometimes people were too young and immature to read and understand it and they wrote it off as superstition. Many church goers didn't read the book and took their preachers interpretation as the gospel. She said the Bible explained that there were people who had wanted a world government and that they had already started to build the Tower Of Babel with the UN. "The Bible is a warning against Progressivism and that it was partly why the Progressives hated the Bible and pushed scientific evolution." she added.
Emma said that her mom and dad didn't let her go to church and that she really wanted to go. She explained that she could have started going after she got a couple of years older and could understand the things being discussed.
"Your dad really knows a lot more about the Bible than any of us do." Susan added. Emma said, "Yeah, my dad can be dumb sometimes too, he isn't perfect and my mom says that he doesn't understand some things because he is a man.". Bob laughed.
Emma asked if Lisa could tell her about the movie "The Matrix". Lisa explained that the main character was learning about the law and how it was different from the Legal system with its acts and statutes and that the agents of the movie were like the government people trying to take Nero's money and freedom.
She explained that in the beginning it had people being used as batteries and they were free to dream and create their own ideas while the matrix sucked their energy out of them just like in the real world before the power went out. The people that were used as batteries in the movie had no idea that their reality wasn't really a reality at all and that is was just made up to make them feel safe and comfortable while their energy, their money, their power was taken from them.
Emma decided to go to bed, saying that she wanted to talk more later. Lisa said she would stay up and read the novel she had started to get her mind off Dave. She said "You know Emma, we are very lucky this happened and to be safe. The old world was in serious trouble and not enough people were thinking about it or thinking about what they could do about it. The power outage probably saved our lives and maybe the lives of many others.".
Bob said "Emma, essentially the needs of the individual are the same as that of society, ease of economic load and safety from barbarians but when a supranational group of private banks own and operate society, society becomes subservient to their interests* and this is what essentially happened. The private banks bankrupted the Western countries in 1933 and the countries became used as means to their end which was depopulation and the formation of a world government. Technology created the need for fewer people. They didn't want to manage so many people so they created wars and phoney environmentalism to cut down populations and public education to dumb everyone down to get them to go along with it all.".*James Traficant speech, www.dougplumb.blogspot.com
Dave came in the house a short while later repeating "Its Dave, I'm alone" over the loudspeaker. Lisa put her book down and knocked on Bob and Jennifer's door.
Lisa hit the switches for the hatch, opened it, and ran up the steel stairs. Dave and Lisa came down and Lisa remarked that Dave smelled like he hadn't had a bath in over a week. Lisa told him to bathe because the rest of them did while he was gone. Dave closed the hatch door and went to put a pot of water in the microwave for a bath. He said it was cool in the shelter and that he would turn on the generator to warm the shelter up, he had not seen anyone in the neighborhood so he thought it was safe. Bob watched the shed on video while he and the others listened to Dave through the bathroom door as the generator ran.
Dave said that he had a few things to tell them and that tomorrow morning he would be going back out at sunrise. He said that he wanted to stay out all night but the sky was partly cloudy and if clouds covered the moon it would be too dark. He didn't want to light a fire and be seen.
He came out and sat down at the kitchen table and Lisa put a hot meal in front of him. He started explaining that he had seen a lot that day but he still hadn't figured out where the dogs were coming from. He said that he saw a lot of bodies and there were thousands of people down by the river and piles of dead bodies were being taken in the direction of the lake on makeshift stretchers.
People were going down there for water and they found things like beef, pigs and moose and deer cooking on a spits and lots of water to drink that was boiled before being given out. The people that were running things were giving everyone food, water and shelter and taking care of everyone's bicycles and taking their guns. They all wore red shirts, dark baseball caps and carried weapons.
They heard the door of the house open again over the speaker and footsteps going through the house. They all went over to the video display, replayed what had just been recorded, and watched to see who went into the house while they listened over the loudspeaker. "They are robbing us!" exclaimed Jennifer. The rest remained silent and listened.
They watched two men walk into the house carrying plastic shopping bags that were partly filled with small household items. They listened over the loudspeaker as one went into the kitchen and opened cupboards and looked in the fridge while the other one walked through the bedrooms and came out with some pillows. One said to the other "I guess someone has already been through this one.". Dave said that these men were two of the Red Shirts dressed like the ones he saw at the river.
He said he was expecting that would happen any day and continued to describe his experience down at the river.
They had a list posted written in chalk on a board for things they needed, things listed were toilet paper, buckets, kitchen cutlery, first aid supplies, bicycle tools, towels, soap, all total of about fifty items. Sometimes Red Shirts were going up to the houses and raiding them for supplies but most of the things they needed were being brought down to them by people looking to have access to shelter near water and to be safe from the dogs.
They were building shelters and had tents and a new city was being born along the river. Everyone talked about the dogs and chose to stay safe by the river, protected by the Red Shirts.
After watching them for a while through binoculars, he had decided to go down and be among them. He had hidden his rifle and some contents of his backpack, changed into his civilian clothes and had taken the silencer off the forty-five. He took that down and traded it for food and water during the day. The people in the red shirts had given him a hand written voucher that said he could come back and bring his family if he wanted, if he agreed to give up the gun. The Red Shirts said they needed guns to protect the villagers from the dogs. He told the guys in the red shirts that he was going to get his family and bring them down and gave them the gun. He was outnumbered and didn't want to be seen as suspicious.
He had to trade his own red t-shirt that he had changed into after hiding his ready bag and going down there for one of another color from them because he wasn't working for them. He couldn't wear a red shirt in the new village and had traded his old red shirt for a new blue one.
He talked to a lot of people that had become desperate and had gone down there after running out of water and many of the young adults were asked to join the Red Shirts to help out. There were signs advertising for young people to join to help. Implicit was the first choices at the food tables, and the best of the tents.
People were sitting around with full bellies, they had liquor that the Red Shirts had given out, were smoking marijuana and talking about what had happened and how glad they were that the people in the red shirts were doing all this for them.
"They didn't mind giving up their guns to receive protection from the authorities" Dave said.
The Red Shirts said that they had taped their names to their guns and said th
ey could get them back if they left the new village at the rivers edge.
Dave said that he could have given back the voucher and probably got the gun back...for now.
Red Shirts were all talking about everyone being as one collective and that their interests were identical to everyone else and could be managed efficiently by a central authority. This seemed obvious to most people. Most didn't question it and were glad there were people around to take this initiative.
He said that some expressed doubt about the Red Shirts, some were afraid of what was going to happen next but said they had no choice. Many others wanted to help and maybe change things from the inside but found themselves placated instead. Most were relieved to have clean water and have people to take care of the ones that were sick, many of which had died. A lot of their relatives and friends had drank bad water and died from dysentery and dehydration in the first few days after the power went out. Many were sick and staying in houses close to the river encampment.
He explained that people had to give up their dogs and that the Red Shirts had taken the dogs away. People did not raise to much trouble about that, they had seen or heard what feral dogs were doing.
A few of the Red Shirts were riding bicycles into the neighborhoods. People thought this was to kill the feral dogs and was necessary. Dave expressed doubt given that the dogs had been allowed to be there in the first place. "They could have easily hunted them, but didn't" he added. People were often protected by Red Shirts on bicycles when they went into the neighborhoods themselves to get things the Red Shirts said were needed. He explained that the Red Shirts shot at dogs only to scare them away when they were in the neighborhoods.
Dave stopped talking and finished his meal and went over and sat beside Susan and put his arm around her while the others at the table watched him. He asked her how she had been doing since they got back and if she had had lots of rest and sleep. Susan explained that she was depressed and wanted to go talk with Richard and set him up with his boys in her shelter and that this would make her feel better about Wendy.
Dave explained to her that it probably felt like setting Richard up in her shelter would make her feel better but that it wouldn't. He told her that what she did was necessary but also that it would change her and that it would take a long time for her to process it. He added that they really didn't know Richard well enough to trust him and that his feelings for them may change after reflecting on what happened to Wendy. "You were all in shock after that I think", he added.
He asked her if she wanted to go with him to see where the dogs were coming from. She glanced over at the rest of them sitting at the table and asked Dave who else he had in mind to go. Dave turned around and asked Bob if he would join them. He explained that he needed Bob to look at the situation with him and for Susan to carry her silenced handgun and guard them from the dogs.
Dave wanted Bob to carry a ready bag with the binoculars and lots of water to last them a day. They could take some carrots from the garden and some nuts they had stored to eat and there would be a lot of walking and climbing over fences.
Dave had the strapped three-o-three, Susan had her silenced hand gun and Bob would carry the binoculars and the ready bag. They made all the last minute preparations and set the alarm for an hour before sunrise to eat a big meal before they left the shelter.