There are many people in Asia/Africa for whom life is easy, and some in Anglesey and Lincolnshire for whom life is tough. But we all share one planet.stumuzz wrote:Thank our lucky stars we live in the UK where compared to Asia/Africa life will be easy.
Red pill or blue pill or ignorance is bliss?
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biffvernon
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I too am finding it hard to cope, though perhaps in a more personal way. For me, the particular difficulty right now is the contrast between my life at present – three and a half hour commute this morning on a rail-replacement bus, 12-hour shift of shovelling morally dubious snow, equally long journey home again to a flat with a hole in the roof that I need the cash to fix – and a better future life, that feels so near yet so far.
I feel trapped, hypocritical, and sick at a lot of what I see around me, but I recognise these all as things I can change, by changing my circumstances. This forum has helped a lot and continues to, as do practical and achievable plans for the future.
I write these words while sitting in Murdoch Towers, for my many sins. This is one of the biggest things that I can, and will, change. Seven shifts and counting. As soon as he's paid for the roof.
Maybe then I can start despairing of other people.
I feel trapped, hypocritical, and sick at a lot of what I see around me, but I recognise these all as things I can change, by changing my circumstances. This forum has helped a lot and continues to, as do practical and achievable plans for the future.
I write these words while sitting in Murdoch Towers, for my many sins. This is one of the biggest things that I can, and will, change. Seven shifts and counting. As soon as he's paid for the roof.
Maybe then I can start despairing of other people.
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stumuzz
In the hagakure the advice is to wake each morning and consider all the awful ways you can die and resign yourself to a awful painful bloody death, then when circumstances arise you can march towards it
There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking
The hagakure isn't the only path a person could take there are many paths, you could devote yourself to cleaning up the planet that might cheer you up even if its futile effort it will keep you busy .
I’d do stuff to toughen myself up, get fit experience more cold and wind and rain do some fasting doing that sort of thing may cheer you up
Last Saturday I was doing some filming and got a bit of hyperthermia core temp went to 30 degrees, people start passing out and dying at 27 one of the guys I was with core temp went to 28 that may be a bit cold , but being able to function well in miserable conditions may be a good thing
None of this die-off collapse stuff depresses me because I understand its a thing largely I cant change. lifes always been tough and not so much cruel as unconcerned about suffering
There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking
The hagakure isn't the only path a person could take there are many paths, you could devote yourself to cleaning up the planet that might cheer you up even if its futile effort it will keep you busy .
I’d do stuff to toughen myself up, get fit experience more cold and wind and rain do some fasting doing that sort of thing may cheer you up
Last Saturday I was doing some filming and got a bit of hyperthermia core temp went to 30 degrees, people start passing out and dying at 27 one of the guys I was with core temp went to 28 that may be a bit cold , but being able to function well in miserable conditions may be a good thing
None of this die-off collapse stuff depresses me because I understand its a thing largely I cant change. lifes always been tough and not so much cruel as unconcerned about suffering
"What causes more suffering in the world than the stupidity of the compassionate?"Friedrich Nietzsche
optimism is cowardice oswald spengler
optimism is cowardice oswald spengler
I feel your pain. Back in the 90s I had a joyful year commuting into London from Bognor - 4 hours there and back. I was awful. I escaped. Hope you can too.eyeswide wrote:I too am finding it hard to cope, though perhaps in a more personal way. For me, the particular difficulty right now is the contrast between my life at present – three and a half hour commute this morning on a rail-replacement bus
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UndercoverElephant
- Posts: 13523
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Well, at least the contrast exists! How much better that is than just being stuck in your life at present with no idea of how to escape from the machine, or even that it is possible to escape. Keep thinking about that better future life. Illegitimi non carborundum!eyeswide wrote:I too am finding it hard to cope, though perhaps in a more personal way. For me, the particular difficulty right now is the contrast between my life at present – three and a half hour commute this morning on a rail-replacement bus, 12-hour shift of shovelling morally dubious snow, equally long journey home again to a flat with a hole in the roof that I need the cash to fix – and a better future life, that feels so near yet so far.
To the rest of the board:
Eyeswide is my other half, currently still living in Brighton but soon to be joining me in my new house, with its south-facing garden, in Hastings.
Infinitely better! But in the short term, introducing choice and contrast to the mix has actually made the everyday grind harder. All these years that I had to just keep plugging away/climbing that ladder/paying those bills, I've been such a good little robot. Now I've got some faulty wiring going on. 
Welcome eyeswide! It's nice to have a partner of a long term powerswitcher posting on here in their own right. You might be the first- I can't think of any other couples where both post, but others may know differently.
I think it is interesting that most writers addressing the practical issues of PO, often skirt over the significant psychological issues that also come with awareness of what is happening. I worked extensively with bereaved people and I noticed that trying to understand the full implications of both PO and CC and then integrate this understanding into my life was not unlike being bereaved, both in terms of the loss and also in feeling isolated because most other people don't 'get it'. I think that feeling, especially if you are surrounded by people essentially being paid not to 'get it', can be profound.
As with bereavement. there are things which help and hinder- being able to share with others how you feel is obviously really helpful and learning practical skills builds confidence and self efficacy.
We currently live in a rented flat with no garden but I've recently taught myself to knit and that feels great; since learning about PO in 2006 I've grown lots of veg, kept chickens, got involved with community stuff, increased my cooking skills and massively reduced my outgoings all of which has helped me feel better able to cope and to answer the question in the original post- for me it's always going to be knowledge over ignorance- I'm a red pill kind of a gal.
I think it is interesting that most writers addressing the practical issues of PO, often skirt over the significant psychological issues that also come with awareness of what is happening. I worked extensively with bereaved people and I noticed that trying to understand the full implications of both PO and CC and then integrate this understanding into my life was not unlike being bereaved, both in terms of the loss and also in feeling isolated because most other people don't 'get it'. I think that feeling, especially if you are surrounded by people essentially being paid not to 'get it', can be profound.
As with bereavement. there are things which help and hinder- being able to share with others how you feel is obviously really helpful and learning practical skills builds confidence and self efficacy.
We currently live in a rented flat with no garden but I've recently taught myself to knit and that feels great; since learning about PO in 2006 I've grown lots of veg, kept chickens, got involved with community stuff, increased my cooking skills and massively reduced my outgoings all of which has helped me feel better able to cope and to answer the question in the original post- for me it's always going to be knowledge over ignorance- I'm a red pill kind of a gal.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
Thanks Nexus!
Loss and isolation, yes, that's a good way of putting it. Particularly the latter, I'm finding, and particularly when I'm working in news – which feels, a lot of the time, like non-news or even anti-news.
Good point about the knitting. I had some on the go last year, but had forgotten about it. Will get the ol' needles back out again ready for the long winter evenings!
Loss and isolation, yes, that's a good way of putting it. Particularly the latter, I'm finding, and particularly when I'm working in news – which feels, a lot of the time, like non-news or even anti-news.
Good point about the knitting. I had some on the go last year, but had forgotten about it. Will get the ol' needles back out again ready for the long winter evenings!
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UndercoverElephant
- Posts: 13523
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- Location: UK
Perhaps the term you are looking for is propaganda or disinformation. Stuff that is designed either to mislead people, or to distract them from what is really going on. Anything but actually confronting the real issues.eyeswide wrote:Thanks Nexus!
Loss and isolation, yes, that's a good way of putting it. Particularly the latter, I'm finding, and particularly when I'm working in news – which feels, a lot of the time, like non-news or even anti-news.
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emordnilap
- Posts: 14814
- Joined: 05 Sep 2007, 16:36
- Location: here
Just reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia for the first time (UndercoverElephant wrote:Perhaps the term you are looking for is propaganda or disinformation. Stuff that is designed either to mislead people, or to distract them from what is really going on. Anything but actually confronting the real issues.eyeswide wrote:Thanks Nexus!
Loss and isolation, yes, that's a good way of putting it. Particularly the latter, I'm finding, and particularly when I'm working in news – which feels, a lot of the time, like non-news or even anti-news.
). Talk about honest reporting, which is what it is. Superb. Wish there were thousands of him.Spain had its 'Minister for Propaganda'!
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
orwells great down and out in paris and london is a great book tooOrlov reviews Carolyn Baker's new book:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11 ... .html#moreThis society operates on a combination of conformism and one-upmanship. Collapse as reality is nonconformist—in a society that worships success it is seen as defeatist and unpatriotic. It is also noncompetitive—because who on earth would want to buy it? “After all, who wants to hear that their very identity—the industrially civilized ego they have built throughout their entire lives, the ego that defines who they are—is, well, dying?” (By the way, this explains why my last book hasn't sold all that well.) In any case, if you keep at it, you come to be seen as a loser. Then you start feeling like an unlucky outcast, and before too long you end up with a psychological problem, and start asking yourself questions such as : “What's wrong with me?” “Have I gone mad?” and “Should I kill myself?”
Which is where Baker comes in: she is a trained psychotherapist, and her book is a self-help book. She takes your subjective reactions of hurt, loss, and bewilderment and gives them the status of objective reality. Yes, insanity is just around the corner from where you are standing, but that's a perfectly normal, justifiable reaction: “Anyone preparing for colapse inevitably, on some occasions, feels mad. How at odds with circumstance we are, and how profoundly crazy-making it feels!” Helpfully, she enumerates the panoply of emotions that normally accompany the dicovery of collapse: “crazy, angry, joyful, depressed, terrified, giddy, relieved, paranoid, stupid, guilty, liberated, grateful, despairing, heartbroken, courageous, compassionate, lonely, loved, hated.” For some, the discovery of collapse may not even be necessary: “...I have never met any resident of industrial civilization who doesn't carry some form of trauma in their bodies." (p. 20) And, I would add, their minds and souls as well. Symptoms may include “...sleepless nights, a weakened immune system, moodiness, anger, depression, despair, and, often suicidal thinking.” (p. 26)
Baker's prescription is to heal thyself: “...to become familiar with internal resources; to practice skills of self-soothing, deep listening and truth telling with friends and family, and regular journaling; and to have an ongoing, daily stillness practice that provides grounding and centering in the midst of chaos.” (p. 15) “Healing our own trauma prepares us for navigating the trauma of a world in collapse and also equips us to assist others who are traumatized by the changes and losses of an unraveling society.” (p. 22) And although much of the job that awaits us is a sort of post-collapse hospice care for the severely disturbed, that is by no means the full extent of it: “...hold in your mind the reality of what is and what is yet to come and, at the same time, hold in your heart the vision of what is possible for a transformed humanity, no matter how few in numbers, that is willing to step over the evolutionary threshold and become a new kind of human being.” (p. 83, my emphasis)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass