Just the other day there was a writer that explains a phenomenon in her new book (can’t remember her name off the bat).
She describes the fact that people always say “it starts with you”, promoting individual action. Like, “if you want to stop climate change, why don’t you become a vegetarian.” But few people actually do.
She argued that it’s not that people don’t want to, however what’s never taken into account is that the cards are stacked against the individual by corporations and (in many cases) government.
There are laws, marketing machines, price points and supply chains that set the virtual boundaries within which people can maneuver.
People still have enough individual freedom to keep a sense of free will, but under the hood, this free will is heavily influenced by what’s affordable, normalized or in supply.
It’s a pretty bleak view, and only solved by a change in politics where politicians actually want to work for the people and for democracy rather than for corporations.
The people can provide them with votes, corporations with money. This can lead to a government that benefits from lying to their voters while profiting from corporations.
If I didn’t have a small lake to go to and cry on my lunch breaks, I think I’d have completely broken and quit my job while screaming at everyone around me to fucking do something.
Thank God I can just stare at some birds and water and remember what life is.
A little random, but your comment reminded me of a poem I encountered in college. It’s by Liu Cheng, and in Burton Watson’s translation it’s called “Poem Without a Category.” https://ccl.northwestern.edu/curriculum/poetry/cp.cgi?C/Cheng/PoemWithoutACategory
That’s a lovely poem. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. It very much captures the feeling and sensations of what I was describing.
I spend a lot of money of booze and weed for this reason.
Same, dude. Same.
We aren’t, we are simply adapting and continuing on with our human existence. It’s not normal but humans will always adapt. We invented air conditioners and populate a literal desert in opulence. We literally created flying machines to get from one side of the world to the other in 24 hours. None of that stuff was normal either. We are inventive and adaptive.
Story of my life! 😁😂😭
When has it ever been any better? There’s plenty we can say about class exploitation, racism, lack of healthcare for the poor, low wages, war… but was any part of that better in any other era of history? You could make a tenuous argument that some of these were marginally better a decade or three ago, but in the grand schemes of things, the only thing that’s gotten worse during our history is environmental devastation. And even on that score, we are rookies. The cyanobacteria fucked this ball of slime UP long before it was cool.
I’m not saying everything’s great. I’m saying it’s only been worse as you look back.
The nineties were good. Less racism, less pandemics, no social media to make the world collectively dumber. Just silly clothes and hair we had to deal with.
Way worse homophobia, though.
The word hypernormalisation was coined by Alexei Yurchak a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad. He introduced the word which describes paradoxes of life during the 1970s and 1980s in the USSR. He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society. Over time, the mass delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy with everyone accepting it as the new norm rather than pretend.
Bro, I have just seen so much bad shit happen for months and all my girlfriend will say is, “Something’s gonna happen, something is coming, I’m believing and praying and everything is gonna work out and be okay” and inside, I’m screaming like Atreus from God of War (2016), “HOW DO YOU KNOW?!”
Watch she doesn’t fall victim to a cult or something with that mindset.
“We should boycott Amazon for firing all their workers in my province.”
“Why bother, boycotts do nothing.”
How is that the default response and not “FUCK THIS COMPANY”
SO much learned helplessness in the “geeks” around me. They’ve given up on privacy, ownership, seemingly democracy, certainly peace for Palestine. Never been to a protest, or even considered boycotting. I’m surprised they even bother voting (centrist ofc).
…and instead of joining the boycott, proceeds to do nothing.
I used to read through history and so frequently I would wonder things like “how did these serfs just put up with this for so long?”
I no longer wonder these things.
there’s also the matter that most of the time, you didn’t have to deal with noble strangers with horses expecting your loyalty (often, not the same nobles and horses as the last ones to come around). There may be the local lord but he had good cause to keep things consistent and open up the grain reserves whenever the winter was bad and crops failed.
But the keen thing that changed in the 20th century is we went from a desperate labor shortage to a labor surplus. There was just tons to do and no giant machines with which to do them. Death was right around the corner: A boar attack here, a bad influenza there, any kind of infection (no antibiotics), so people were dropping dead often enough that every last idiot, hunchback and bastard daughter were celebrated as a strong back that could churn butter or assemble barrels or pitch hay.
In fact, society was so fraught that clergy who knew the deal would look the other way when peasants were rutting like bunnies out of wedlock in springtime. (Stories are told and songs are sung of parish priests who were a bit strict on the sins, and how they had a tendency toward morbid mishap.)
We have crusades and territorial disbutes to thank for higher ranks getting into common business. The Third Crusade (King Richard v. Salah ad-Din) squeezed the peasants hard in England. Then Richard went cooky, disguised himself as a merchant, and was seized for ransom, and a king’s ransom was a lot. So the peasants were squeezed so hard it hurt the earls, and John of England (last of his name to this very day) was already a Trumpian / Neroesque asshole, and the economy was already tanked when Richard died in 1199, and at that point enough people were pissed off at unilateral monarchy they made John sign the Magna Carta at swordpoint. Several times.
And that was the beginning of the end of monarchy.
I was thinking something similar in regards to the amount of time it takes. If dystopia and dictatorship is coming to the “free world” the dictators have learned to land that plane gently. It’s nuts that things haven’t properly broken completely. We just keep putting up with small adjustments. I don’t think the serfs would have gone from, say, 2008 to 2025 without some sort of uproar or downright rebellion. Then again. Not my area of expertise.
I’m just over here hoping we destroy ourselves for the benefit of the universe as a whole. We’re a blight.
over here hoping we destroy ourselves for the benefit of the universe
… and Trump took that literally.
don’t say things such as this, not even as a joke :)
I felt this feeling as we were finding out we invaded Iraq under false pretenses to make money for blackrock. We never did anything. I figured people would change but after voting in same clown after the shitshow he did last time……
Didn’t that actually happen (not the Blackrock part)? I thought it came out in a Congressional hearing that there was oil which motivated the whole thing. The U.S. went in to find WMDs but after many years could not find evidence of any.
I guess to call out Blackrock exclusivity is incorrect as they were just security in Iraq. My point was using private contractors and then allowing firms to profit. This government to private is now infecting everything.
2007, an internal Department of Defense census on the industry found almost 160,000 private contractors were employed in Iraq (roughly equal to the total U.S. troops at the time, even after the troop “surge”). Yet even this figure was a conservative estimate, since a number of the biggest companies, as well as any firms employed by the State Department or other agencies or NGOs, were not included in the census
It was just because W wanted to finish what his dad started and remove Saddam. There was no exit plan or grand strategy.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Saddam wasn’t bad, but why not let the citizens of Iraq decide that?
As a dictator he weaponized his ethnic minority to violently oppress the majority. The people in Iraq had no say.
The average American reads at an 8th grade level, with slightly more than half reading at a 6th grade level.
We have been cognitively neutered, by design.
William Gibson wrote: The future has arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed.
Yeah I’ve been feeling bizarre as the US falls into fascism and ill just be at work like any other day
I feel like it’s always been? I read a lot of history and there’s not many instances of peace and prosperity for all. Things considered im happy i live in the modern world, wish I could live in the pre 9/11 sweet spot, shit wasn’t off the deep end as far as it is now, and homes were affordable
pre 9/11 sweet spot
There’s a line in Fight Club about how Jack’s generation has no great war, out no way to prove themselves. It really is a great example of how things felt pre-9/11.
I am Jack’s overwhelming sense of buyer’s remorse.
I recently watched that movie when I turned 40. It hits different when you’re older, when you’re a teen or young person half of it goes over your head. Especially how young people glorify it and the whole fight club thing, not grasping that the movie is about toxic masculinity among other things
Shit wasn’t of the deep end… for some countries.
It’s not possible to have prosperity and peace globally, it’s just not human nature. So even in the most prosperous utopia, war and shit always gonna happen. Reminds me of the bio shock quote “even in an equal utopia someone has to scrub the toilets”
But if you see scrubbing the toilets as a needed and fair work, paid accordingly, scrubbing the toilets stops being a shitty work (pun intended).
No, the current climate change situation is unparalleled in human history.
