PS: A little off topic...

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1470233766744449031/pu/vid/576x720/_wpFbMBlT7BAlGXP.mp4

☮

PS: Mr. Smith, thank you very much for the book! In a subsequent post, I was going to write more about the motives and also the anonymity that could be had (in some ways) more easily back in 1980. This book ought to be interesting.

PS: Good morning Mr. Moderator...

“Do you figure each one could go on a flatbed?”

Yes. The flatbed trailer is designed to haul a maximum of 48,000 pounds but tri-axle trailers can haul a maximum of 65,000 pounds making them suitable for heavy cargo. I think a flatbed is the easiest way (likely the only way in 1980) to move slabs of granite weighing ~21 tons (42,437lbs). Moving them a short distance (~15 miles) also helps make the project easier.

Here's a straight .pdf of Mr. Christian's book...

https://www.mediafire.com/file/8lq5v50o2pvfalt/Common-Sense-Renewed.pdf

I started skimming through it last night. Mr. Christian is indeed concerned about nuclear war and unchecked population growth...

“We live in a time of great peril . Humanity and the proud achievements of its infancy on earth are in grave danger. Our knowledge has outstripped wisdom. We have controlled disease, but have not regulated our numbers. We have advanced our understanding in the natural sciences but have not adequately controlled our baser animal instincts. We have begun to accept the rule of law but have limited its application, permitting it to regulate the affairs of individuals and of small political divisions while we neglect to use it in controlling major aggression. We have outlawed the use of murder and violence in resolving individual disputes, but have failed to develop procedures to peacefully settle conflicts between nations.
Meanwhile , we have made the world an atomic tinderbox.”

He describes the threat of nuclear war as “the greatest challenge facing us”.

I think his book might put an end to some of our speculation regarding his motives. I look forward to reading it.

Found this on wikipedia...
https://i.ibb.co/92BzNZh/World-population-milestones.png

I hope you have a great day!

☮

PS:  Mr. Smith, that wording never got changed to match my looking up some details. I was first guessing, just estimating how much of the whole 237,000 lb the 4 big vertical stones were. I first wrote 28 tons or so. After I looked it up, I forgot to take out the "must" before "weigh", as that 21 tons is not a guess anymore.

Do you figure each one could go on a flatbed? (I can't open your .zip file on this device - later on I will be able to, on another.)

PS: Good evening...

Each big vertical rock must weigh ~ 21 tons, so each could still go on a regular flat-bed, they can easily fit in a lane...

https://i.ibb.co/wcqKp8y/guidestones.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/YQK6246/layout.jpg

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Georgia+Guidestones,+1031+Guidestone+Rd+NW,+Elberton,+GA+30635/Pyramid+Stone+Industries,+1000+Pyramid+Rd,+Elberton,+GA+30635/@34.1634561,-82.9857186,12z/

https://i.ibb.co/rGD4bFp/Common-Sense-Renewed.jpg
(right click → save as → change file extension to .zip → open archive → enjoy)

☮

PS

RE: Moderator

Another difference with Japan is the Japanese were pro-US, pro-Western throughout the entirety of those fat years (1970s, 1980s, 1990s), whereas if China is now near its peak, they are more anti-US and anti-West than at any time in decades.

The Chinese today are also basically highly revanchist, and meeting even pleasant, mild-mannered-seeming, apolitical Chinese of ordinary type, you'll often hear them make war-rhetoric-like slams against Japan. But the typical Japanese you'll meet of analogous type is nothing like that, not conspicuously nationalistic in that way.

The CCP promotes anti-Japan feeling as do several other elements in East Asia, but what's funny is how it's not much reciprocated by typical Japanese.

An example. There is a disputed rock in the sea between the Koreas and Japan. Polls and experience talking to people suggest overwhelming Korean support for holding the rocks, and making a big deal out of them, but most Japanese having no opinion, large portions even basically unaware of the dispute, whereas every Korean is aware of it and tows the party line. The Japanese government has offered repeatedly to submit the dispute to international arbitration to settle the rock dispute in court and treat the decision as binding, but the Koreans refuse to do this.

I am guessing the Senkakus, the larger-scale dispute with China, are much bigger deal, as they are symbolic of the real potential of PRC-China coercing Japan and every other neighbor into secondary status, a PRC sphere of influence with the genderless US Navy off the scene.

There is, therefore, a big _qualitative_ difference between China-2010s/20s/30s and Japan 1970s/80s/90s, a kind of multiplier above what are already quantitative absolute and relative differences.

PS: Indeed, Mr. Blanc! It's like Steve Sailer reading the NY Times so we don't have to. Well except, this was a nice fun outing. Can that really be fun for him? I hope not...

Alarmist, the Atlanta Rhythm Section started out as session musicians in Doraville, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I don't think of them as part of the Athens music crowd, which was a big scene in the 1980s through I don't know, it all sucks now. However, "Spooky" would have made sense here. Yeah, Athens has the U. of Ga, and pretty much any big university is part of the NWO or the Woke World Order, nowadays. Nobody out there that day while we were there was from the U of Ga, though.

Mr. Smith, I may yet get to check out the Iron Horse. Upon reading your Atlanta Constitution article, I really wonder what the students had against this thing in the 1950s. I guess it was ugly for it's time, not likely now. If the family let's it get put on campus, some group of some diverse sort WILL find a reason that it is raciss, sexist, or just plain not weird enough in some way.

You are quite welcome about the interesting reading thing.

PS: Mr. Hail, I was leaving more about the languages for another post, but thank you, Adam, for that. Yes, you guessed pretty well.

I have written about the late-1970s through early-1990s trade situation with Japan vs. the one now with China. I think we are not only talking literally and order of magnitude in scale - money and population, but America still manufactured a whole lot of stuff in, say, the 1980s. Yes, we'd lost the decent-camera market and lots of the auto market, which is a biggie, but not nearly everything retail, as now.

On the world population issue and the difference between 1979 and now topic, you covered some of what I will write about in future posts, Mr. Hail, so I won't reply on that here. Yes, this is interesting stuff, even if you figure this monument was just a silly whim by some people with more money than they knew what to do with.

PS

Thank you, Mr Smith,

So Japanese didn't make it on the list, but Hebrew did. And so French and German were cut for Arabic and Russian.

Good guessing by me on Swahili.

I'm also going to guess/propose that if the tablets made even just five years later than they were, Japanese might have made it.

Not sure if Japanese would still have made the cut by the 2010s. Japan remains a well-functioning place, successful enough, and a great place to visit (pre-CoronaPanic), but the buzz around Japan is noticeably much less in our time than in the 1980s/90s.

(Sidebar: Donald J Trump got his start in political commentary by bashing Japan to some extent, and calling for a trade war against Japan, in the 1980s. In the 2010s DJT simply updated that with "China" replacing "Japan". Not saying he was wrong or right, but noticing it was all about Japan back then. Look up and DJT political commentary/interviews from the 1980s or early 1990s, you'll likely not wait long to hear him bash Japan for unfair trade practices and US leaders for being weak and clueless while Japan "ate our lunch.")

OTOH, the Guidestoners might have written off the Japanese for being able to read the Chinese and get the gist of it at least. Which might have also been the reason for cutting French and German.

And am a little surprised they didn't include an Amerind language just for appearance's sake. If the tablet were made some twenty years later, I'm guessing they more likely would have. (By that time, the quasi-honorific "Native American" was increasingly pushing out the long-established "American Indian.")

PS: Happy Sunday Everyone...

The 8 Languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

In March of 1980 the global human population was ~4400 million and it has since ballooned to ~7900 million.
(That's an additional 3500 million people in just 41 years!)
(For reference, in 1900 there were fewer than 2000 million people on the planet.)
The UN Population Division report of 2019 projects world population to reach ~10900 million by 2100.
(Unfortunately, most of that population growth will be dysgenic.)
Meanwhile, some people predict that if the world continues fishing at its current rate, there will be no fish left in the sea by 2050.

https://i.ibb.co/qxk2y9B/Sailer-Graph.png

If Sailer's data is correct, the world will be blessed with an additional 3000 million Sub-Saharan Africans by the end of the century.
(That will be Amazing!)

I've never visited the Georgia Guidestones. They look interesting and would probably make a nice day trip.
If I'm ever out that way I'll stop by and take a look.

I too spent a little time traveling around Georgia this week, and I rode by another such roadside attraction. This one also happens to be “just up the road from Athens” and it too has an interesting history, though it is quite a bit smaller than the Guidestones weighing in at just 2 tons.

The Iron Horse is about an hour from the Guidestones...

https://i.ibb.co/fF9xjzw/Iron-Horse.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Horse_(sculpture)
https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/fate-the-iron-horse-contentious-uga-icon-again-the-air/xet9Y5UdGnsHE368vdNWtO/

I never heard of the Iron Horse before we rode by the other day.
I didn't get out of the truck to walk up to it but there is a little parking lot and a gate that says “enter here”.

Here's another cool roadside attraction for anyone who happens to be traveling around Ellijay...

http://www.grassfedgeorgia.com/

Many thanks to everyone, especially Achmed, for all the interesting reading this week.

I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend!

☮

PS Peak Stupidity: Seeing the sights so we don’t have to.

PS

"English and Russian are together at the front of the stones facing the road"

And this is the kind of thing I mean in the preceding comments. Nobody would make a monument of this kind in the 2020s with English and Russian as the two stand-out languages.

The "Georgia Guidestone" must be understood as a historical document in its time and place.

The "500 million" population thing, likewise, reflects 1970s thinking which seemed relevant to a certain kind of person at the time, but is kind of lost on us today, a little like many of the political debates of the 19th century about people arguing over silver money vs. gold money which no one in mainstream discourse talks about today, and which you'd have to track down a well-read libertarian to even have a meaningful conversation about.

In other words, when different eras of history try talking to each other, a lot gets "lost in translation"!

PS

On "depopulation":

If the tablet was created in the late 1970s and erected in March 1980, the 500 million number must reflect the "over-population" concerns of the Green-adjacent politics of the time.

We're now at 7000 million, of which around 900 million today are Whites --- with a much higher average age than most other macro-groups; but the East Asians are catching up, especially under the demographic weight of the PRC's rapid aging. Whites broadly defined are on target for a downward move toward 600 million or so by midcentury.

But except for Subsaharan Africa, there is no more generalized Overpopulation Catastrophe scenario on the cards, as it seemd to be to a certain kind of 1970s person. Most populations --- except Subsaharan Africa and an increasingly small handful of non-black Muslim countries --- are now set for population contraction from low fertility. Even India sank below its replacement rate in about 2015/16, and with the CoronaPanic-induced hit in 2020-21, they are well below replacement. (This is certainly good news to India, except that as usual its Muslims have higher fertility than its ["Hindustan's"] quasi-titular population, the Hindus.)

If we assume the men behind this tablet conceived the idea a few years before it went up --- i.e., that it reflects the thinking of say 1977 --- the low-fertility trend was less than a decade old by that time, and sub-replacement fertility in the West was just a few years old.

As we write today, in the 2020s and under varying degrees of depressing (and fertility-depressing) Corona-Panic regimes, the low-fertility trend is well-established and fifty+ years old.

If the planners of this tablet were doing it afresh today, a lot of wording would be changed.

PS

I wonder which languages a similar tablet as this March 1980 tablet would have a century later (2080 AD) or several centuries later (2500s or so AD), or two millennia (March 3980 AD).

PS

"120 ton granite monument has inscriptions in 8 languages"

Which languages?

Probably I can find this info but let me guess cold:

English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Swahili, Hindi

PS

Just up the road from Athens ... How NWO that corner of the world is.

I’m surprised you didn’t go with “Imaginary Lover” by ARS, though “Spooky” might have been the more temporally appropriate ARS release.

PS: Thanks for that link, Avenger. I'll refer to it in another of my posts on this American Stonehenge.

PS More about the American Stonehenge:

https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/georgia-guidestones/