Does anyone else feel like...something isn't right,

[guruilla]

Acceleration. Yes. That distinguishes the times we are in and also, the fucking climate is fucked up. We have truly fucked the planet up; at least for life as we know it.

I agree that when fire was first harnessed there were probably many which felt the world had turned upside down and muttered/grunted about how something wasn't right.

This is different.

Isn't climate change a continuation and variation of the "MAD" idea of mutually-assured nuclear destruction that most or all of us here grew up with? The belief that human beings can and may be in the process of destroying themselves as a species, and even the entire planet. This is almost certainly a new concept for the individual psyche to have to integrate and live with.

Terror Management Theory is all about how death anxiety gets sublimated/displaced into frantic cultural activities such as war, social reform, art and industry, and how it's probably been there since the dawn of civilization (being what caused it to dawn). So now we are born into an awareness not only of our own individual mortality but that of the species, that everything we do is all leading to dust.

That's a pretty tough awareness to live with because it constantly reminds us of the futility of the very activities we were once able to pursue, to keep at bay the awareness of our mortality. People can no longer pass the buck of meaning to the next generation, when they know they might well be the last.

[zangtang]

Who knew science fiction was going to be so shit?

- and we haven't even really started yet......

[DrEvil]

I think one important aspect is that we today have access to so much information. We're more aware of the world around us ("We" as in Riggies, the rest of the world are still ignorant tools ) and just how messed up it is.

Go back 20-30 years and you had to read actual books or subscribe to some obscure newsletter to learn these things. Today they're just a Google search away.

[Iamwhomiam]

^^^^ Interesting. I listen to the radio most of the time mostly for background noise, but every one in a while something will catch and hold my attention. Having missed the story's introduction explaining who the narrator was, I believe he was an educated westernized Afghan, he went on to tell of his and a friend's plan to show a movie, forbidden in Taliban Afghanistan, to a man without any education from a community so rural he was even unfamiliar with electricity. As it turned out, the man was a bit distraught after they explained there really weren't people in the box, and trying to get him to understand Rambo killing the mujahideen and everything else he saw was an illusion and not real. After this, he fell into deep silence in a corner of the room silently questioning reality. His world just ended, he knew, and was determined to head home immediately so his two young brothers could as soon as possible begin becoming educated to better deal with the new reality. He would prefer to live his simple, purposeful life in the world he understood.

[Grizzly]

^^^^ Interesting. I listen to the radio most of the time mostly for background noise, but every one in a while something will catch and hold my attention. Having missed the story's introduction explaining who the narrator was, I believe he was an educated westernized Afghan, he went on to tell of his and a friend's plan to show a movie, forbidden in Taliban Afghanistan, to a man without any education from a community so rural he was even unfamiliar with electricity. As it turned out, the man was a bit distraught after they explained there really weren't people in the box, and trying to get him to understand Rambo killing the mujahideen and everything else he saw was an illusion and not real. After this, he fell into deep silence in a corner of the room silently questioning reality. His world just ended, he knew, and was determined to head home immediately so his two young brothers could as soon as possible begin becoming educated to better deal with the new reality. He would prefer to live his simple, purposeful life in the world he understood.

What? Not clear what I just read, please elaborate...

[Elvis]

^^^^ Interesting. I listen to the radio most of the time mostly for background noise, but every one in a while something will catch and hold my attention. Having missed the story's introduction explaining who the narrator was, I believe he was an educated westernized Afghan, he went on to tell of his and a friend's plan to show a movie, forbidden in Taliban Afghanistan, to a man without any education from a community so rural he was even unfamiliar with electricity. As it turned out, the man was a bit distraught after they explained there really weren't people in the box, and trying to get him to understand Rambo killing the mujahideen and everything else he saw was an illusion and not real. After this, he fell into deep silence in a corner of the room silently questioning reality. His world just ended, he knew, and was determined to head home immediately so his two young brothers could as soon as possible begin becoming educated to better deal with the new reality. He would prefer to live his simple, purposeful life in the world he understood.

Iam, do you remember which station or program you heard? I'm curious because I find the bolded part hard to believe; it sounds like propaganda, doesn't it?

[Iamwhomiam]

It was a touching story with an unintended cruelty. The simple, ordered world the rural Afghan existed in was just blown away and he ran from it, feeling to old to adapt to this new reality, while at the same time knew it would be beneficial for his younger siblings to gain an education so they could better cope in future with this new to him reality.

The fellow telling the story was well meaning. Sometimes some news is just too much to bear.

I suppose it's difficult in this day and age for us to imagine some on earth still exist as they have for thousands of years, by meeting their basic needs daily without knowledge of electricity or modern conveniences.

I spent time trying to locate which show it was I listened to this afternoon on WNNU 89.5 FM, an NEPR affiliate, to see if there was a synopsis offered with a podcast. My computer is far too slow to wade through their program schedule, but I did and could not locate it. Maybe I'll call the station tomorrow to see if anyone there could direct me. Hope that a bit more clear, but I'm not sue it is.

[Iamwhomiam]

No Elvis, it wasn't propaganda, but I was expecting that. You must remember it's me and my addled brain trying to remember, so it's gonna be somewhat inaccurate.

I would have thought him running home to get his brothers educated would have been seen as the NPR propaganda, though.

I'll post a link to a podcast or transcript if they can locate it from my recollection. I mean, if they don't hang up on me while I'm trying to explain what I'm looking for.

edited to add, it aired sometime this afternoon, after Peter Shcikele's show ended at 2pm, and before 5pm. Whether it was a repeat show, I do not know, though much of their programs are repeats.

[Project Willow]

Of course nothing feels right. The Trump candidacy, the endless war in the ME, the barely veiled terrorist strikes here and in Europe, the unequal march of technological progress, the ever effortless passage of more draconian legislation, are all harbingers of everything people here have wrung hands over for a decade or more. We are solidly on the path to domestic peak fascism, international peak imperialism, and global peak capitalism. It may take another 20 to 30 years before our individual quality of life degrades to the status of unbearable in overtly measurable ways, but it is finally, plainly, obvious we are all solidly on the path to cataclysm. That is what does not feel right. The question is, for those of you who have the fortitude and desire to intercede, what do you do now? What can any one of us do?

[BrandonD]

For myself, that wrong feeling stems from an essential part of myself rejecting the predatory nature of the entire visible world, as it has been described to us through language. Things like wars and environmental destruction seem to me only the predictable results of the fundamental "code" that makes the world around us tick.

Because of the incompatibility between this "essence" and what appears to be real, there is a recognition in myself that the world I see is in some way an artificial facade.

[Elvis]

I suppose it's difficult in this day and age for us to imagine some on earth still exist as they have for thousands of years, by meeting their basic needs daily without knowledge of electricity or modern conveniences.

You're right of course, even about a man who had never seen TV, my snap assumption was every village must have a TV by now.

It occurs to me, it'll be a sad day when the Last Man on Earth Who Has Never Seen TV dies... or sees TV.

[brainpanhandler]

For myself, that wrong feeling stems from an essential part of myself rejecting the predatory nature of the entire visible world, as it has been described to us through language.

Example?

Things like wars and environmental destruction seem to me only the predictable results of the fundamental "code" that makes the world around us tick.

That code being? Predation?

Because of the incompatibility between this "essence" and what appears to be real, there is a recognition in myself that the world I see is in some way an artificial facade.

Explain.

[jakell]

Does anyone else feel like... something isn't right?

Has no-one referenced Hitchiker's Guide yet?

Ah well, don't panic

[Luther Blissett]

When I haven't created anything for a few weeks, like the situation I'm in right now, I start to feel this sort of external transmission of depression. I've come to recognize it and could react / fix it, if I could manage. Usually I can't. The next "task" that I've given myself is not an easy one, it's like I'm sabotaging myself. And these creative pursuits are all related to rigorous intuition-style subject matter — while I can spend hours here reading, I can't bring myself around to completing, or even starting, some of these projects.

The climate and weather right now is a huge one, I have to agree. This Christmas could likely be the hottest in the Eastern U.S. since colonization. Supposedly something went out on the AP wire telling meteorologists to call it a "blowtorch effect" because that's what they're all saying. We can now no longer say the world has warmed 0.8ºC, it's a full 1º or even over (about 1.14ºC). Since the last El Niño, 93% of warming has been absorbed by the oceans. This El Niño is killing that, causing the oceans to release excess heat into the atmosphere - and the potential warming effects could be staggering.

I actually feel lucky to have experienced derealization over two periods in my life so that I know what it's like, and I for one am glad I'm not feeling it now. The world seeming grey, desaturated, volume turned down, and like a theater set, two-dimensional. The last part of it was the most astounding - that city streets could feel impermanent without any backing, ready to go away at any moment. There was something like this idea that no one was caring for the immediate landscape.

[Grizzly]

Has no-one referenced Hitchiker's Guide yet?


YEAH, no offense, but FUCK the platitudes and bromides. This isn't a feel good novel.