There have been a handful of times in my life, maybe four or five or so, where I was walking in a dark parking garage or similar venue alone in a city at night, and came across a sketchy-looking dude that was looking at me weird or otherwise triggered my confrontational intuition based on his vibe, clothing, and/or body language.

And each time I kept it cool on the surface, looked at him confidently, but kind of subtlety clenched my fists and was internally amping myself up with uncontrollable adrenaline like, “You want to fucking go dude?” and began running through mental routines of how to drop him based on certain approaches, or what if he has a knife and how to focus on that, etc.

To this day, I don’t know what percentage of them were intending to be a problem. Maybe none. Maybe one or two out of five. I think at least some of them probably triggered defensive instincts in me for a reason; those aren’t there for no reason. Some aspect of them seemed acutely out of place or overly intentional, etc. Studies generally suggest that attackers pick out less confident looking people. Easy targets. They use their instincts too. Part of me wonders if any of them might have tried something if I slumped my shoulders and tried to walk quicker to my car rather than look straight at them and and basically amp myself up while also acting like nothing was happening. Some vibe of me was present for their instincts too.

But perhaps more importantly, I wonder what it feels like to be totally afraid there. To have no defenses, no answer. It happens to people all the time. You’re in a parking lot or garage and there is a sketchy dude or a few drunk guys. You get on a small elevator with a guy and it is you and him and he’s 80 pounds heavier. My father put me in martial arts so that I wouldn’t face a scenario with no answers. While I might feel adrenaline or concern, I never feel powerless. I immediately start running through options. I wonder what people feel like in these situations if they have literally never had a fight in their lives. Like, I might or might not win in this scenario, but either way it’ll be absolutely vicious if it gets down to it. I can’t imagine having no answer.

Or the doorbell rings at 9pm while my husband is on travel. 95% of me like “probably a neighbor” and the other 5% of me is looking out the window and clenching my fists slightly and running through those same routines and thinking about the closest knife location in case this gets weird.

I think that is an important aspect to teach people. Everyone should have basic defense training. Not everyone is going to have extensive combat training, but everyone can have some basics to boost their chances by either improving their vibes to avoid being targeted or having some basic starting points of what to do if attacked, since some actions like yelling and having a handful of moves to get away from a grab or hit someone back or otherwise make someone realize that it’s not worth it. It’s the same as having basic cooking skills, basic repair skills, how to change a tire, etc. you just have to know a few things.

I am getting close to giving a more detailed assessment on Israel/Hamas, as it drags on.

And it will probably be Nostr-only since other platforms can’t handle it. It is too polarized. Everyone is tunnel-visioned.

My husband is currently in Cairo dealing with some property work we are doing for our extended family. They are only 250 miles from the problem, and Egypt’s acute currency crisis brings it closer to home if military or refugee shit hits the fan. Most of my extended family is geopolitically or financially close to the Israel/Gaza issue and is Muslim. I am thus both close and far from the issue. And I grew up in the US in a diverse region with Jewish and Muslim peers, but more-so Jewish overall.

Suffice to say, I don’t want civilians on either side to suffer or die. I am pro-humanity first and foremost.

Before I give my eventual analysis, I am happy to see Nostr comments on the issue. What are your thoughts and questions on the topic? What would you like to see addressed from a diverse or as non-biased source as possible?

Although it was predictable ahead of time that so many Palestinian civilians including children would die as a result of Israel’s response to the attack on Israel by Hamas, as the numbers continue to add up it is increasingly hard to watch.

Half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 18. There is not much more sad in this world than children, cut off from electricity and communication, violently dying from air strikes in darkness.

And sadly this happens in other places of the world too.

For much of human history, people were only aware of their own local area. Now we have awareness of large swaths of the world, and so we can keep track of tragedies in real time. We then desensitize ourselves out of necessity. Like, the sheer amount of negative information and unsolvable problems hit us through media, and in order to productively do something to add value to someone else, there is little choice other than compartmentalization it. An electrician can’t be caught up in the troubles of the world as he goes out each day and fixes things and building things, for example. In order to add order to his small part of the world, he can’t be fully caught up with its global chaos.

And then, I see these crazy protestors tearing down flyers about kidnapped Israelis, as though that activity could possibly be the best use of their time. People have a strong tendency to want to be part of something bigger and longer lasting than themselves, whether it is their religion, their community, their ideology, or their work. But some people chose such fruitless ways of doing it. Yes, you can and should advocate for not bombing children. No, you shouldn’t try to erase what happened to murdered or captured Israelis either. It is not rocket science.

The world is an increasingly polarized place, and my biggest concern is for those polarizations to be used to take rights away in a more broader context, or to wage war between larger opponents. Politicians will propagandize any small share of “crypto funding” to bad groups to justify more restrictions on those technologies and privacy in general. As countries go through sovereign debt crises, having some sort of enemy to point to helps their narrative for capital controls and keeping their citizens in currency and bonds as they are inflated away. I’ve studied the 1940s financial environment too much to be unaware of this.

Always look through to the bigger story, and ideally with a perspective of empathy toward many sides of any complex issue. Strive to be able to articulate your opponent’s view as well as they can, so that your counter argument can be most effective and surgical in its nature. And then, when there is nothing you can do about something globally, try instead to bring order and reason and improvement and kindness to whatever small portion of the world that you can.

I used to believe in political incrementalism- the idea that you can change things gradually through better election outcomes.

But maybe it was also just youth, I don’t know.

After spending many years studying how the current monetary system works, studying how past debt and currency cycles ended, and based on practical realities from the past two election cycles, I dropped any notion of incrementalism, at least for the big economic things.

Incrementalism works for minority groups to gain social and political rights. Religious people to practice without interference, women to vote, gay people to marry, etc. Immigration policies. Things like that. But it doesn’t work for the financial system.

Instead, history and current affairs suggest that things generally point in the same structural financial direction, uncontested, until there is a massive fiscal crisis, geopolitical crisis, and trend change. And that is when politics becomes critical in all aspects- as chaos develops, the group that has enough power to set the next order *really* fucking matters. They either build a platform of virtue toward the next cycle, or they fall into the unfortunately common paths of communism or fascism.

And it is not just ideas that triumph, but technology too. Technology plays a big role in which ideas are even workable. Both ideas and technology are important.

So when I realized incrementalism wasn’t working, I sought out other methods.

The weaker method is just social- I try to put things out there with my platform to encourage reason, empathy, human rights, etc. Not partisan but also not necessarily moderate, but rather grounded in firm principles of virtue ethics.

The stronger method is to play some small part in building something better. Alternative money. Alternative communication methods. Either explaining and recommending them to people, or directly venture investing in companies that build on them and help improve the UX and solve new problems.

That’s my goal. I want to do whatever tiny part I can to bring about more peace, more fairness, more opportunity, more growth, and less destruction.