Who is at risk now from climate surprisrs

In brief -- Peru, Norway. Scotland, Sevastopol to start..

---------- Forwarded message ---------

A friend asked just who is most at risk near term. That's complicated because there are different aspects of climate change. Still, I owe you a response for the H2S aspect, the most serious aspect neglected by mass media.

There are three streams of major damage due to H2S production in water and the ocean changes leading to them: (1) the Pacific Ocean stream, the most serious; (2) the Arctic/NorthAtlantic/Gulf stream; (3) local issues in places like the Black Sea and the Chesapeake.

From the first two color figures I copied into www.werbos.com/Atacama.pdf, it seems that the Pacific stream causes no damage until 2050 or so, after which it kills all humans. But I left out an important aspect there. As the oxygen content of the deep Pacific decreases, the oxygen content of the Humboldt current which cools Peru and Chile also decreases. Since it is a complex system, I do not know the curve by which it gets to zero, but it might well be a linear decrease by 3 percent by year by now. Since fishing is a huge part of this economy, that is serious. There is a natural cycle of about 20 years related to the natural El Nino cycle, but people tell me that problems have continued and grown even after the last 2014-2016 cycle ended. It may be possible to understand better via satellite data and such even without a need for US government support. (Again, important resources popped up when I googled on ocean oxygen satellite). 

After 2050 or so, when O2 in that stream hits zero, the stream will at some point convey H2S instead of O2.

The Arctic/../Gulf stream is more immediate, and also goes well beyond what we see in most of the media. The Economist did run a cover story "Will Britain freeze over?" a some years ago, based on the weather of Broyden (sp?) of Southhampton. The usual official fake news plscebo folks did their best to discredit this but (1) a few years later, he won a major prize for best o ean inputs to climateocels; (2) it only accounted for sputtering due to erratic salinity inputs, and not the effect of temperature direct on currents, which was zero in the past but will certainly be huge when the 0 degrees C line us crossed. As I mentioned before, Norway and Scotland freeze before England, but lots of other impacts occur, including straight H3S poison. The sheer stench may affect tourist industry in places like Peru before the more fatal effects.

The Black Sea is ALREADY a great reservoir of poison, but effects more limited because of no massive Coriolis currents like Humboldt. Still, it was interesting last week to read of a dispute between Ukraine and Russia about who gets the blame for a small cloud of poison gas in that area. The chemocline (the line between poison and more normal water) has risen a lot,and there may be more to come. I do wonder at times about Sevastopol and what might happen there, especially given Russian government positions on such things.

Other aspects of climate damage are well publicized, some more than what is publicized, some less. Scott's comments about damage to fishing are correct to the best of what I know. Hurricanes hitting the Gulf may be far worse when warming Gulf stream current weakens, because heat which now warms Norway will get hurricanes, relatively soon, but I stopped tracking the zero degrees C transition in Arctic when I shifted to Antarctic and other things in retirement. The importance of acid ocean has been vastly overstated in some places; many things attributed to it are more caused by agricultural and industrial runoffs, which are also central to the H2S streams.

Best of luck, Paul

 

Oops, Ma, Trump accidentally lost the entire galaxy, more to come

Sent to Howard Bloom this morning, in response to his message (see below) that SLS, the core of the NASA program today is...
============
You are very right that SLS is a farce and a crisis. At some level Trump became aware of that, and his new space force efforts were the first serious hope in ages of the kind of breakthrough we would need for space politics to be more than futile BS, playing into the hands of those whose supreme goal is to steal more taxpayer money for nonproductive makework.

But Trump has a problem. How do you get ANYTHING done when all the competent people you know (aside from your daughter) are either the real leaders of the swamp or unreliable tricksters?

Following the advice of swamp creatures very close to him, he picked mike griffin to run the new dod space technology push, and a wide range of other things. Griffin is very highly trusted and recommended by folks like Senator Shelby, not because of technical depth and leadership but because of loyalty and reliability. Where did he prove these things and who is he really loyal to? None of the swamp monsters close to Trump told him: it is because of how he followed orders to the letter for Shelby in the 90 day study which emasculated Bush's push to return to the moon. If trump had picked former major general james armor to lead the space force effort, pulling him back into government and insisting he break with atk, I might still be optimistic, but under griffin i am very pessimistic, and i now have no channels to inform him and test whether he really wants results.

I am leaving the country for a couple of months now, for quick brief turnaround in November. (A DOD person has agreed to use our small but conveniently located house somewhat in the meantime.) This morning i have internet access, but i can only guess where I might have a little access between now and november 17. This problem is huge, but is only tip of a bigger iceberg.

The sad truth is that Musk is not the answer either.

In the years when NSF let me fund advanced hypersonics research, the old NSF system let me dig deep and find out what is really going on at a technical level, and get past all the BS and spin game dreams and propaganda. Truth and realistic advanced tech are a lot of work, requiring a dedication to truth, and Lamar Smith (Shelby ally) put an end to the old way of doing business, without which the US will never recover. In some areas, like antisatellite weapons, AI, batteries and quantum technology, China is moving so fast so far ahead of us that guys like Griffin cannot even see it (and wouldn't tell Trump how bad it REALLY is anyway ). But for space launch they rely on less competent parts of their own large nation, and i see little likelihood of similar breakthroughs, from them or from Musk.

But: it is out of my hands now, as I literally sail off into the sunset.

Best of luck. We all need it.

On Sun, Jul 29, 2018, 6:30 PM Howard Bloom <howlbloom@aol.com> wrote:

To: Howard Bloom <howlbloom@aol.com>
Sent: Sun, Jul 29, 2018 5:58 am
Subject: The Space Review: SLS: to be or not to be, or to be something else entirely

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3429/1

SLS: to be or not to be, or to be something else entirely

by Dick Eagleson
Monday, February 12, 2018

Sailing into the sunset day one

confessions re President McCain

This week, all the channels reported that people felt about the death of John McCain the way they
did about the death of a very popular President. And briefly one guy asked: "Why is that? How can it be?"

One reason, of course, was McCain's honesty, integrity, basic friendliness and effective focus on what he focuses on. All of these are refreshing qualities we should think more about. But I must confess... I believe there is more to it than that.

I still remember the moment in 2014 when I was startled to realize that **WE** -- all of us humans -- are what they call "macroscopic Schrodinger cats." For several years, I came to understand much better what this really means, both in mundane technical terms, and at the level of psychic or spiritual experiences. But just a few months ago, my psychic/spiritual exploration of that came to a very abrupt end. In a way, I was like the folks that Greeley and McReady talk about ("Are we a nation of Mystics?", reprinted in Goleman's book Consciousness), who have an intense experience but then recoil in fear. Sometimes we are not ready yet. 

The abrupt end: a very convincing "assumption dream" in which I visited my alternate self in the earth in which McCain was elected instead of Obama. (Yes, I believe that there is a kind of leakage between the alternate earths, really, by way of the noosphere, whose evolution created a level of intelligence using quantum effects which we haven't had time to reach yet here on mundane earth.)

My alternate self was doing a lot better than my self here and now in some ways. The integrity and support in that environment let me reach further in some important ways. I could learn unique things from that alternate self. But there was this little problem of war putting an abrupt end to what had been better. I think. Not a message from the end point yet. But yes the end point for our McCain has been reached, and what can HE see from where he is now? He was aware of a few mistakes he would regret... and maybe he had some inner sense of his real other life?

===========================================

Just a few more of the thoughts which got me thinking of McCain this week...

I may be one of the few people who ever compares Trump to Augustus Caesar and family. That comes from a visit to Cartagena (and Rome), and I'll skip that for now. (Though I do remember Julius had comments about Marc Anthony similar to what some would say of McCain: "He wasn't such a genius. He was such a formidable foe just because of how uniquely honest he was.")

Lots more people wonder about Trump and Hitler, in part because issues of race really are out there in the noosphere. My immediate knee-jerk reaction last week was: "Isn't Trump more like Hindenburg, that silly old wealthy class guy who got swept away by the flood he enabled?"
So I looked up Hindenburg, who was discussed only very briefly in the classes I took at Harvard. To my surprise -- he sounded a lot more like McCain than like Trump.

=================================================================

More scientifically (sort of); both McCain and Trump have strong elements of being right-brained people, not the folks lost in a world of low affect and formal dry words. We have more and more troubles with people lost in the world of empty BS, and this is seriious science.
(I still remember a few years ago when I had a plenary talk at an international conference primarily for research psychiatry, where Laurie Granit also had a plenary. If you don't know the name, it is worth looking up. I agree with her that we have a real problem with the patients running the asylum.
But Trump and McCain were both different, both willing to eject the BS... though they throw it in different directions.)

Einstein was also heavily right-brained, but comparing Einstein, McCain and Trump, we can see that it's not ENOUGH to know how right-brained a person is to describe what they are like. (By the way, as a proper follower of Von Neumann, I am 50-50 myself, not right or left.)

Dedicatoin to the spirit of truth is another very crucial variable. Ability to FOCUS is another; some high esoteric Japanese Buddhists even define "samadhi" in terms of a kind of focusing ability. McCain was phenomenal in his ability to focus, to penetrate through illusions in his area.
(Hey, guys, I know exactly how that feels myself, especially after the paper I submitted yesterday to a physics journal. A kind of being in the zone...) HOWEVER: folks who are good at focus sometimes have a problem with tunnel vision. As in, "If your only tool is a hammer, the whole world starts to look like a pile of nails." (A deep truth we need to keep remembering.) And McCain focused so well in front of his face that...  Levitin has a great best-seller about the need for BALANCE, not just focus but also control of focus and occasional relaxation of it.

=========

Having just a few minutes... I heard an interesting joke the other day.

"It's as plain as the nose on your face, and as hard for you to see yourself. Unless, like Trump or Pinnochio, your nose grows so big even you can't help seeing it..."

My reply to a physicist warning us not to attack Trump

JACK WROTE:

PS be careful what you wish for re: Trump.
If the traitors here in US succeed in their Coup d’ Etat there will be a Civil War in America leading to WWIII and a nuclear holocaust.
None of us will survive. The Trump haters here are literally insane literally foaming at the mouth with no critical judgement - yes very much like unconscious Zombies.

==============

I do agree with Jack that our lives are at stake here and now, everyone on this list. 

I do live near DC and have lots of primary source information. Therefore I will will do the best I can to rise to the challenge of responding intelligently to his post.

===============================================

Once again, though I disagree with Jack's beliefs, I am deeply impressed by his authentic psychic intuition and by his courage in

trying to start a dialogue. In a way, he is right to compare himself to Donald Trump, and his empathy for Trump is a very worthy thing.

However, as with Trump himself, there are certain issues about situational awareness being biased by personal ego interactions

(like what Heidegger would call small Being space), and lack of the intense disciplines called for either by the spirit or truth or the spirit of love. 

(For amusement... my wife, who is a Real Russian with Romanoff genes, asks why I hang out so much with that guy Yeshua "who is such a hippie, talking about peace and love all the time, even though he does know a lot about brains." It is interesting to hear what THEIR sources think about Trump.) 

Einstein himself was somewhat autistic, an extreme right-brainer, who as a child did great with images but poorly with human relations. We do need to appreciate what people of that sort, including Jack and Trump, can contribute to society, if we find a way to benefit and empower them without letting them destroy the whole show. Einstein DID have a strong devotion to truth, and if Trump had had more of that, we might not be in the truly awful situation we are in today.

Jack -- I am not a Trump hater, though I admit I voted for Hillary Clinton, lethargically, without any real psychic energy or activism in the act. (Comment: I was lethargic about it mainly because I feared that "the swamp," already growing much worse, had plans to get rid of her quickly, as they did to Rousseff in Brazil.) Yeshua keeps saying we should discipline ourselves not to allow hatred of any people to take root in our mind, and we had a major discussion about Trump and current trends in Langley Quaker meeting this week. Many of us have sincerely hoped that the best hopes of positive outcomes of a Trump Presidency could emerge, and tried to help in whatever little ways we could to help that part, even to the point of offending equally ideological people on the left or in the swamp who have also disappointed us to some degree. 

Many of us have even achieved a certain degree of empathy for trump and what he is trying to cope with.

In previous months and years, I was well aware of forces more malign than Trump (which I do think of as traitors -- or, more accurately, people who have sold out to enemies of the Republic who liked the cash and decided not to ask too many questions, or people blinded by their own small Being ego issues loosely linked to their corporate bases). As early as 2003, I received reports showing that the same folks who used improper means to trick us into a war with Iraq were pushing very hard for a war between US and Israel versus Russia and Iran, in the expectation that someone else would be able to pick up the pieces. The 911 commission report and the investigations by Crown Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia, among others, have filled in some of the picture. When Donald Trump told the media they were creating hysteria at risk of causing world war, the media treated his comments in a proud juvenile way which made me sick. 

But no, Hillary Clinton is not the secret emir of Qatar. That idea reminds me of Jack's claim that Sutherland's math solves the hard problem of consciousness. It displays a style of thinking which can only by understood with the help of neurospychology beyond the scope of our discussions so far, and hard to get straight by email in any case. 

Was Trump really fighting off pressure by new war mongers eager to start a new world war? Well, on CSPAN, I saw Mike Rogers (then head of CyberCommand, expansion of his earlier duties as head of NSA) urge Senators to give him authority to launch an offensive cyberattack to shut down all electricity in a major city of Russia, just to show them who's boss and to show how upset we are with them. Hillary Clinton was not exactly diplomatic at times, but cyberwar? Cyberwar today is every bit as serious as the other kinds, and I could say a lot more if people were interested. Trump forcibly resisted all that,... until last week, when he gave a kind of blanket authorization to DOD folks to launch cyberattacks at will, without any review by State or by the White House. 

See https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2027682670595473

Trump had a really hard week last week. So did I, by the way, not in personal life, but that's another matter.

Early in Quaker meeting last week, a mathematics professor at GMU said: "I remember the time when everything was going so bad and so dark, and it seemed the enemy was totally winning on all sides. So I decided just to stop fighting and turn it over to God/light, and everything was fine." But last week, in my view, Trump just turned over his last remaining serious reins to the swamp. It was a decisive moral decision on his part. 

Now he hints that he will do his best to cause an authentic civil war if he is impeached. If it has come that far, and if he is that committed to the dark side, then it is better and safer to get it over with when there is still some hope of saving the Republic.

Best of luck. We all need it.

=====================================================
=======================================================

The physicists's reply:

This is more dangerous than the 13 Days in May 1963 Cuba. 
All of our lives are in danger in the next few months you should be very concerned.
America is now a Banana Republic because of the sedition of the Obama/Clinton/Mueller/Comey/Brennan/Clapper/Hayden/Rosenstein … Cabal.
Trump realizes this and he will not give up without a fight using the full power of the presidency and loyal forces in the US Military and Intelligence Community. The situation here is somewhat like Erdogan’s in Turkey when they tried to remove him. Trump has 63 million adult supporters most of which are armed and will go to war if Trump is forcibly removed with these phony charges.

My reply back to him:

We certainly should be concerned about the sad fact that Jack's comments are echoes of what is being beamed to millions of people, via social media systems targeted to those they think are most receptive. And Trump's recent decision to cut off security clearances to many leaders of the intelligence community reinforce reason to be concerned about what they are planning.

Yet what Jack says about Comey being compromised are true. it is sad that he or Trump could imagine that the guy who cut off Hilary's previously likely election, and did many other things of the same ilk, represents her in any way. But yes, there is a lot of choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea (or Scylla and Charybdis) here. My impression is that Trump is simply too dumb and too emotional to put two and two together, and realize that he is being used,

and setting up the kind of coup in which he would be the first guy killed. 

Letting it fester more would only make it worse.

========================================================

Related somewhat is the hysteria abour Russia. trump HAS played a decent role trying to get people to be a bit less irratoinal and hysterical.
Russian hackers certainly have done bad tings to our elections, but between computers and money, right now money ismore potent. Much more of the corruprion of US elections and democracy and integrity is due to money networks. That's how the swamp (aka gestapo) works. It is pathetic how successfulk it has been in teh distraction maneuver, using hysteria about one problem (however legitimate)  to distract from the bigger one. But cefrtainly trump himself has been distracted and used, to the point of what seems nonsustainable.

=====================

A friend asked: what could Trump do, short of resigning, to tame the swamp? A partial answer: instead of asking
Justice to investigate Clintons more (transparent dumb idea), ask the Mueller investigation to be expanded to follow the
money from Qatar, Turkey and other sources named in the 911 commission report. Friend says: but a lot of Congress
loves those folks. Yes, the worst of the swamp goes VIA Congressional offices to suborn US agencies,
violating long established rules of many kinds. And that's where the worst danger of coup type stuff comes from. 

IT and HR: a key element to decide our future?

Ever since I saw the Millennium Project scenarios for the future of work, based on in-depth studies all over the world, I have been ever more worried about potential catastrophes if we all just follow the paths of least resistance, both on the issue of work and on how the Internet of Things (IOT) develops. The two are related, as in six slides I put together about a year ago:

http://www.werbos.com/IT_big_picture.pdf

To find a way forward which is sustainable (which allows us humans even to stay alive!!)., it is necessary but not sufficient that there be aggressive new development of the kind of greater IT platforms which do not just roll over everything else we do. I still think that the "new paradigm" slide includes key, necessary elements for such new platforms, but it bugs me go realize that there are other really crucial elements missing in that ;picture, even just on the IT side.

This morning, I feel I have more of a sense of what is missing, and it has direct connections to ... 

In truth, I have also been ever more depressed by what I see on the news lately, which feels more and more like "damned if you do, damned if you don't." It's a complicated story...

but at the end of the day, it seems clear that LONG-TERM there simply will not be enough of the kind of jobs people want most (the kind which support large families) for everyone on earth. It can't be done. Yes, it is feasible to eliminate hunger worldwide and to eliminate lack of access to many basics, but ... not to meet this high standard for jobs. I'm tempted to say more about why, but this is already a long post.

Is a world of a constant or bounded sum game doomed to war, and then extinction? Many implicitly assume so these days. But millions of years of life on earth say otherwise. Max Weber, in particular, discusses the kinds of patterns -- above all, of legitimacy -- which make it possible for a society to survive and do reasonably well despite the inevitable deep conflicts.

It is interesting, as we scan instabilities in culture and politics today, that the themes of racism and the theme "it's a rigged system" go hand in hand. When I was growing up, fierce competition and selection were expected,  but so long as it was a fair system, judging people as individuals not on the basis of things like race, people did not feel threatened.

And so: I wonder: is it possible to start thinking of humane personnel management IT for large corporations and government, even more open and transparent as the FASTLANE system we once used to manage fierce competitions at NSF (but without the backdoors and short circuits which made a mockery of that system since about 2014), with really serious open standards, to create a reliable context for human collaboration and competition, which could restore more of a sense of fairness? 

It may seem odd to talk about that at a time when the important reforms of Teddy Roosevelt are being dismantled by myopic people, but his time was scary too. 

Just a next generation business process reengineering, with much more of a human emphasis? And pushing for hardwired rules to better empower humans?

The core issue for the US is with folks whose income comes from employment in such large organizations, so that is a rational place to start rethinking things from ground up.

Links to others are important, in time, but the core challenge is interesting enough, certainly requiring a kind of COLLABORATION of world class IT, really serious HR understanding, and even advanced psychology stuff. (I think of a great talk I heard by Miguel Nicolelis last month, well worth anyone's attention. He has taught the lame to walk, and found new ways to use truly noninvasive brain computer interface technology.)

Just some initial thoughts...

Did God give us Donald Trump to help us achieve enlightenment?

PLEASE do not interpret this question as an assertion. However, I do view it as a serious question well worth thinking about (with the understanding that the word "God" is not so trivial as most people assume it to be).

Just two years ago, one of my many scientist friends said: "For years, I have been 100% convinced that the cosmos is totally governed by mathematical laws, and that all this stuff about 'life is just a dream' is total nonsense. But then...  after what has been happening lately.. culminating in Donald Trump being president, it really has gotten me to wonder. Is it possible that it really all is just a dream after all?" (So that election got him to think....)

For myself, I am still 70% convinced that the cosmos is not only governed by mathematical laws, but that it is governed by the kind of mathematical laws physicists have become comfortable with -- stuff like partial differential equations (PDE) or like Schrodinger equations over a multiverse based on ordinary 3D or 4D space. But what about the other 30%? Just how weird could life really be?

This morning, I start to feel like that other guy. If the whole world starts to feel like a kind of bad dream, shouldn't we start paying more attention to striving for more lucid dreaming and some VARIETY of positive visualization (more than just the biased polyanna PR which is part of the bad dream)? Is that the whole point of this?

I still remember a time, back when I was fourteen, holding a copy of Spengler's Decline of the West, sitting on a hard wooden bench waiting for the school bus. I remember thinking: "Ohmigod!
If this guy's theory is right, I will be seeing a lot of pretty wild things right in my own life, in the next 50 or 60 years!! How does THAT affect how I think about things...?" Of course, I have read a lot of other theories, but I have also gotten deeper into the decline and fall of the Roman Republic and Empires, and that has always been deep in my mind. It is hard not to see recent events in the US and Europe in that light... and to tilt my dreams that way, even with refinements. Trump fits right in there; he often reminds me of the ampitheater dug up in Cartagena in Spain...

And so, it was ever so great a pleasure a few months back to read a book I bought on kindle:
www.amazon.com/Tyrant-Shakespeare-Politics-Stephen-Greenblatt/dp/0393635759/
The start of the book reads like an attack BOTH on Trump AND on the Moslem Brotherhood, but that wasn't what made me feel better. What made me feel better was the chapter on Henry VI, which offered a whole other dream (grounded in reality as much as Spengler was), with far more real hope of life becoming better despite the kind of horrible confusion swirling around us today (as it was then). Can we change the channel from Spengler to Shakespeare?

That thought came very strongly to me today, when the dreams Out There were portraying Trump as now more like Macbeth, with a bloody knife in his hand. I said to Luda: can't we make it more like Henry VI? Her response: sure. Next section is Richard III. People keep comparing Trump to Richard III, but Richard III was more like Stalin. But OK, maybe that's the next chapter.

God help us.

But we do all have our roles to play, and responsibilities, even those who are just watchers or witnesses. After the MacBeth scene, the question was addressed to me: "OK, Paul, what do YOU see? You've been doing due diligence, struggling hard to be detached. What data do you enter for the record?" OK: while CNN has promulgated false horror about Trump's accusation that they have supported the drumbeat for a new world war (US and Israel versus Russia and Iran, per the explicit game plan of the Moslem Brotherhood), Trump just authorized free and uninhibited cyberattacks on Russia. The Russians and Chinese for their part have clamped down on any hope of the North Korea situation being solved short of war, and have joined the Texas mafia folks in pushing for an insane and suicidal explosion of nuclear threats of all kinds that they know about. He is certainly no Hitler, more like the old transitional Junkers or Mussolini, but he has sold out and violated the integrity of the republic in numerous serious ways which do set the stage for worse. At least Hitler knew how to add and subtract. The left is lately even more out of touch with reality, so what could be done?

Enough. Can we not find SOME way to change the channel? What ever happened to the spirit of love and the spirit of truth? Let alone the kind of strict fairness we used to strive for in the old NSF? (Fair selection is a key requirement of reality on a small, bounded planet like this.)

But... as dreams and reality intermix... a year ago, I had a chance to do a Doctor Strange reenactment in Nepal. (Don't underestimate how literally true that is.) Soon, I sail into the setting sun, officially for a kind of reenactment of Moana, hauled onto the boat of a worthy young woman.. who knows? I certainly don't.

=========
One more data point. The firing of an FBI guy for saying the wrong things about Trump in email to his mistress was a VERY clear data point on the negative side. The security clearance issue was perhaps debatable, as strange things ARE going on, but a misdirected missile seems likeliest there too. Trump's enemies have clearly been giving him guidance on whose rights to violate, preparing both for his .. denouement,,, and for reduction of democracy in the US. The news about voting fraud by Republican governor in Georgia also has a final days feeling to it.

==============================

Speaking of Nepal, I posted to the (reconstituted) Vedanta group this morning:

Is there a way to think seriously about the Possibility of life being a dream, without just freaking out and disintegrating either into jellyfish or into irrelevant hardened ideologues out of contact with real life?

I see more of that in literature (despite ITS many bad practitioners, like any field) than in philosophy or religion or science these days.

For example, I remember a time many years ago when someone I met on the astral level recommended four science fiction writers for me to read. I was very frustrated at the time when I could find no writings of one of the four, but a year later that other one was there too. One of the four was Dan Simmons, best known for his Hyperion series. Certainly real enough. But he also had a short novel called "Muse of Fire" which I see as a way to try to get real about idealism. When I read the book, I had the impression that he was really hoping to displace Farenheit 451 as a little book assigned in English classes all over the country... that it would be a good thing, but not so likely for now. And of course, the movie Inception grapples with issues fundamental in idealism. 

In truth, the recent news related to Trump has ME thinking more about life as a dream, and about the need for more lucid dreaming. Not as a joke, as a serious thing. 

Avtar mentioned the linguistic origin of the word "samadhi" as union with the whole. OK, if the whole is the Great Dreamer, a bit like that sleeping Vishnu you guys must know about, then the 

issue of lucid and constructive dreaming should be something more unavoidable as one approaches that state, even in the earliest stages, no?

Vinod's suggestion that there are of course no seductive females in any of the worlds of dreams... well, it is comic as much as it is sad. It is also sad to 

reject any elements with any hint of life or perfume in them. But no, those are not trivial elements. Nor is the present situation of humanity trivial.