Cutting a long and tedious story short, the general opinion here in among tourists and medics in West Africa’s Senagambia is that the pollution (via diesel fumes, uncontrolled waste burning and persistent illegal noise levels) all contributed to me suffering nasal and sinus collapse last week. After a tricky 48 hours of being bombarded with antibiotics and antihistamines, persistent false-dawn medicine being what it has always been, I’m now having to restore my immune system by using antioxidants and probiotics.

Contributory factors (I’m told) were poor sleep patterns causing noise fatigue, stress as a result of not much empathy, poor quality food in underperforming restaurants and the general inability of hospitality suppliers here on the whole to grasp what real marketing consists of….viz, listening to the guest’s needs rather than following their own greedy desire to charge more money for less service.

Gut problems, unhealthy diet, disturbed sleep and stress are very much a continuum….and always have been. But there are many ironic reasons why the 21^st century involves a process of non-stop [and worsening] stress created from all points of the socio-technological-ethical compass…atttempting the avoidance of which is distressing by nature.

The key factors that make for distress are the rise and rise of unelected power, the dilution of the Rule of Law, the planned complexity of digitalising motives, the lunacy of artificial intelligence (AI), massive rises in hard-drug usage around the world, neocon foreign policy risk-taking, the power of genocidal monopolists, farcical tech complication from Silicon Valley, the patient-addiction aims of Big Pharma, both nation and bloc State fiscal incontinence, bourse bank practices, bogus climatology emergency nonsense….and probably above all, the money-controlling, narcissistic and surveillance capacities of the all-conquering Smartphone.

We of higher discernment and lower distraction tendencies see the human species – especially its transhuman fans – hurtling towards a vastly more dystopian multi-dimensional mess than anything recorded by either ancient or modern commentators.

The seemingly inevitable nature of the untold distress coming our way not surprisingly adds to….um, yet more stress the more one thinks about it.

Everything the giga-rich billionaire-to-bureaucrat complex sets out to do destroys our voyager gene, natural good health and common sense instincts, while using non-stop fear to try and turn us all into hypochondriacs, scaredy-cats and baffled recipients of cod-science lies.

Being controlled is distressing, stressful and inevitable at the outset of 2025.

The only route left (or at least, the only one I’m prepared to go with) is that of boycotting the maniacs while doing everything to avoid being wiped out.

The best example I’ve seen of that approach of late was sent to me by Slog follower Carmel Macormack four days ago, involving an article at The Expose site written by Rhoda Wilson

I commend it to you.

If you want to emerge on the other side of this planetary black hole, abandon greed and replace profit motive with survival instinct.

Enjoy the weekend, and remember: meditation usually achieves more than medication….what’s more, it’s free.