InstaPunk Returns

  The Blue Pill speaks. I did something unconscionable on the last day of 2025. I posted End of Year Thoughts for 2025 at the conclusion of the first turbulent Year of Trump 2.0 and barely mentioned Trump. The post was over 12,000 words long and linked four directly related posts by name that totaled another 12,000 words. I must have rocks in my head. As I expected, it hasn’t drawn much traffic yet. I even took the unusual step for me of posting a promotional reel for my own post, which is also off to a modest start. 23 views, as compared to my most popular reel this  month, which got 30,000 hits making fun of Tim Walz.  I’m not even disappointed. It’s the holiday season and social network traffic is down across the board. As I said when I posted it in the 31st, I wrote it because I had to. Nobody has to read it because I want them to. I’d have left it there to find its own way in its own good time, except that as I have experienced fsr more frequently than the laws of co...

 [ Before we begin, a word about hyperlinks in this and any Instapunk post. They’re there to help you, not create a series of distracting digressions. Good rule of thumb: note that the link is there, take it if you can’t resist, but try to finish reading the post and then go back to any hyperlinks that still intrigue you. Videos are reader’s now/later choice every time Absolute linearity is the obsession of the obsolete typewriter crowd.] The Preface to this post is  here . Göbekli Tepe. 12,500 years old. Belief in the existence of the divine lasted for 12,340 yrs. This is very long. I had to write down what I was thinking in some detail. I’m glad I did, but you don’t have to read it at one sitting. If you like, you can skip all the way down to the Section titled “The Secular Dead End” and get the tone and gist of my perspective, leaving the substance till later or never. Understood? Let’s get down to it. What’s the Big Thing that matters most, more than anything? Answer? The ...