Dawn of misery? Time of change?

[Kyriakos]

What do you think of the current era, particularly in the west? It seems like a dawn of a prolonged misery. Many countries already face serious economic problems. Maybe this will lead to an organized move by them, against the current economic model which has at least partly to do with their ongoing plight.

Personally i have never been happier. Originally i reasoned that this was so because i had appeared to project anything negative onto the outside world, the realm of the Nation. But i don't think this is utterly true. I am just more happy than i have been almost ever, more productive in literature and art in general, and more carefree.

However i also think that this era of misery might be a good opportunity for a literature of the dark and desperation. In more happy times there too existed the art of the negative, sometimes popularized, when it was neither too evidently deep nor potentially life-shaking. I am thinking of an easy, popular culture example, the rise of the band Nirvana in the early 90s. However the early 90s were an era of hope. The cold war had just ended, and there was the hope that the future will be better than ever before.

Now it is not an era of hope, but perhaps it can be a time of change, and growing up. Maybe a lot of people in the west will turn to more profound occupations, or maybe even more of them will collapse into petty bickering amongst themselves for "the bread's pitiful need", as Cavafy put it, that is for money and food, to fulfill the most basic needs.

And you? What do you think the immediate future holds for those affected by the ongoing and possibly deepening crisis? A change? Something deeper than just the epidermic occupation with thought and art? Maybe the reality of the 21st century is shaping up just now, after the fanfare a river of tears flows in the corpse of the old hope, but maybe this corpse is such, and those tears are such, that they can be used to re-animate it.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

My brother went out with a girl called Dawn. She was pretty miserable.

 

[warpus]

My theory is that so many people are miserable because .. well.. let's face it, this culture of consumerism that's so prevalent in the west doesn't make you happy in the long term..

You buy buy buy until your credit card is maxed out just so you can have that latest gadget, a bigger tv, an $800 watch, or whatever. People are putting themselves in debt and living cheque to cheque.. So much stress! And for what? So that your friends can see how cool you are? How much you can afford?

Materialism.. it's a bunch of bs and it's crazy how many people buy into it..

I prefer a much simpler life, free of a lot of that stress. All my credit cards are paid off and I usually only buy things when I need them. I don't even drive a car! People don't get that.. In the end for me it means more money for overseas trips, less maintenance, less stress, more walking, and a healthier warpus with stronger legs. Yeah, every once in a while I'll splurge on something, but I can afford it.

Your possessions aren't really that important.. and when you don't have many - that rare splurge will lead to a lot more happiness than a splurge every 2nd day.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

You buy buy buy until your credit card is maxed out just so you can have that latest gadget, a bigger tv, an $800 watch, or whatever. People are putting themselves in debt and living cheque to cheque.. So much stress! And for what? So that your friends can see how cool you are? How much you can afford?

Materialism.. it's a bunch of bs and it's crazy how many people buy into it.

Yep. I don't blow money on electronic gadgets or worry about fashion. If I want something, I stack up Amazon gift cards until I have enough, thereby getting it for free.

The only thing that really matters is family.

 

[Narz]

Dawn of misery? Time of change?

Both. Peakoil & climate change our going to rock the crap out of us. It's a tragic time because we've been raping the Earth so long we can't imagine not doing it, meanwhile the raped Earth will be a far less receptive provider during the economic contraction that is just beginning. We're going to need a lot of creativity to heal our troubled planet & our troubled selves.

 

[Eretz Yisrael]

Well. What we all need is a Communist Revolution to get into a new phase of human history.

Or we could ask the Pope to create a Christian Socialist World govenment, where everybody would love each other as creations of God and bring a New Jeruselam as Revelations tell us.

 

[Miles Teg]

Dawn is a pretty miserable time when it involves the change of waking up.

Other than that, I've got nothing. The future is pretty damn hard to forecast, and the safe bet is usually "things are going to change a lot less than people tell you they will".

 

[Narz]

The future is pretty damn hard to forecast, and the safe bet is usually "things are going to change a lot less than people tell you they will".

I'll take that bet. I'll give you 10 to 1 odds on it actually.

 

[Ergo Sum]

I'll take that bet. I'll give you 10 to 1 odds on it actually.

Meaningless rhetorical devices, go...

Narz's enthusiasm notwithstanding, I tend to agree with Miles Teg. Here's a thought experiment: try to think of a time during our race's existence which could not be described as a 'time of misery,' starting with your criterion of 'threat of economic contraction,' continuing on to 'threat or actuality of warfare,' 'ethnic cleansing,' 'crushing poverty and starvation brought on by Malthusian economies,' 'aristocratic stranglehold on peasantry...' the list goes on. One might conclude that our times are in fact the least miserable so far...

 

[WWTVICTOR]

My dad told me that it is an era of change...the Euro-americans led the whole human beings since ceuntries ago...the Mesopotamian did in the copper ages...perhaps...a new age has come.

The tone sounds pessimistic, isn't it?

 

[Narz]

Meaningless rhetorical devices, go...

Narz's enthusiasm notwithstanding, I tend to agree with Miles Teg. Here's a thought experiment: try to think of a time during our race's existence which could not be described as a 'time of misery,' starting with your criterion of 'threat of economic contraction,' continuing on to 'threat or actuality of warfare,' 'ethnic cleansing,' 'crushing poverty and starvation brought on by Malthusian economies,' 'aristocratic stranglehold on peasantry...' the list goes on. One might conclude that our times are in fact the least miserable so far...

If you the myriad of threats that face humanity at this juncture in time have counterparts in past times your head is in the sand. Certainly calamities occurred, empires crumbled but these events were local & no permanent damage was done.

If you want to measure misery by pure human suffering there are more impovrished now than ever more. You could say that all the middle class white-suburbanites cancel & the slightly better off Indian family working in a call center & able to afford fast food cancel them out but I don't think the wellbeing of one person cancels out the suffering of another. I just watched the final episode of Tribe (the BBC show) last night about the Penan and how their forest home is being decimated by logging companies as their nation struggles to compete in the global marketplace at any cost (the tragic theme of the last hundred years). They were scared. They knew first hand how their lives were dependent on the land, how deforestation & monoculture were destroying their food supply, water supply, their very existence. But we're far removed from that in our insulated homes behind our little laptops... for a little while.

Anyone with the scantest bit of awareness fears for the future, everyone else is self-medicating or simply deluding themselves. Scientists keep having to alter their over-optimistic predication about global warming every year; despite demand destruction oil prices due to the recession oil prices are not falling. There is no sign of real global change, the analogy of a runaway train seems appropriate. World leaders like Obama worry more about speechwriters than what the world will look like for their grandchildren. The type of leader we really need would never get elected because the populace couldn't handle the truth. No one wants to be forced to sacrifice anything for the common good even of their nation, let alone the world. Look at the far-right movement in the US as an example of that. And it's understandable. Chances are it is too late to make sacrifices. The time was in the 60's and 70's, ideally earlier. Seems like the worst damage to public moral towards doing the right thing occurred in my lifetime. I was born in '79. A year later Regan took office, ripped the solar panels off of it, promised a new era (the beginning of the end really) and since then we've simply been on a spiral of unsustainability that no one takes seriously anymore just because the Club of Rome got their dates a little wrong.

Maybe you grew up in the 80's too. You seem to have the typical too-cool-to-care attitude popularized in that decade (which of course is a emotional defense mechanism to deal with fear which I used to wish I could pull off but now I'm glad I can't, though it probably would help my insomnia).

 

[Leoreth]

My dad told me that it is an era of change...the Euro-americans led the whole human beings since ceuntries ago...the Mesopotamian did in the copper ages

For how many centuries? Three? Four, if you're generous?

 

[WWTVICTOR]

For how many centuries? Three? Four, if you're generous?

Mmm, I don't know, he did not told me.
Anyway, I don't think that it is an important matter.

 

[Leoreth]

It is. People act like American-European dominance over the world is some kind of natural state that's now destroyed, but the fact is it wasn't but for a few centuries. Ask any Chinese about their economic success, they will tell you that it's a return to their previous position, not a rise to new heights.

 

[Kyriakos]

From discovering previous centuries through reading, and mostly the 19th century and early 20th century, i can say that it does appear that the cultural level of the world was higher than that of today. The modern era seems plagued with the aforementioned blatant and circular consumerism, lack of high-level education, and an overall sense of alienation of the individual with technological progress.
The later seems not so difficult to account for, since in a space of half an aeon mankind went from horse and carriage to airplanes, computers and finally the internet.

Personally i am not of the view that as a whole the world was ready for any such drastic change. I am sure not many people actually pondered the long-term effects of the internet for example, when they formed it as an experimental program. Now it is here to stay, but did it make our life better?
I could go on about the net, but this is not a topic specifically about it, but the whole age.

 

[Ergo Sum]

If you the myriad of threats that face humanity at this juncture in time have counterparts in past times your head is in the sand. Certainly calamities occurred, empires crumbled but these events were local & no permanent damage was done.

If you want to measure misery by pure human suffering there are more impovrished now than ever more. You could say that all the middle class white-suburbanites cancel & the slightly better off Indian family working in a call center & able to afford fast food cancel them out but I don't think the wellbeing of one person cancels out the suffering of another. I just watched the final episode of Tribe (the BBC show) last night about the Penan and how their forest home is being decimated by logging companies as their nation struggles to compete in the global marketplace at any cost (the tragic theme of the last hundred years). They were scared. They knew first hand how their lives were dependent on the land, how deforestation & monoculture were destroying their food supply, water supply, their very existence. But we're far removed from that in our insulated homes behind our little laptops... for a little while.

I was directing that line of reasoning (least miserable so far) more at the OP than at you, because as much as the media emphasizes how terrible the world is nowadays, there's little that compares with where humanity was before. Sure, in absolute terms there might be more starving or impoverished, but two hundred years ago we were starving, impoverished, and orders of magnitude more poor than we are today. Regardless of predictions for the future, I think it's worth pointing out that things aren't so bad today.

Anyone with the scantest bit of awareness fears for the future, everyone else is self-medicating or simply deluding themselves. Scientists keep having to alter their over-optimistic predication about global warming every year; despite demand destruction oil prices due to the recession oil prices are not falling. There is no sign of real global change, the analogy of a runaway train seems appropriate. World leaders like Obama worry more about speechwriters than what the world will look like for their grandchildren. The type of leader we really need would never get elected because the populace couldn't handle the truth. No one wants to be forced to sacrifice anything for the common good even of their nation, let alone the world. Look at the far-right movement in the US as an example of that. And it's understandable. Chances are it is too late to make sacrifices. The time was in the 60's and 70's, ideally earlier. Seems like the worst damage to public moral towards doing the right thing occurred in my lifetime. I was born in '79. A year later Regan took office, ripped the solar panels off of it, promised a new era (the beginning of the end really) and since then we've simply been on a spiral of unsustainability that no one takes seriously anymore just because the Club of Rome got their dates a little wrong.

Maybe you grew up in the 80's too. You seem to have the typical too-cool-to-care attitude popularized in that decade (which of course is a emotional defense mechanism to deal with fear which I used to wish I could pull off but now I'm glad I can't, though it probably would help my insomnia).

Of course there are many grave predictions for the future, but there have always been. I'm not denying the possibility that things will be as bad as you make them out to be. But maybe you've been too enthusiastic in swallowing up the alarmist dangers that, as this thread proves, gets under many people's skin. I've realized that I simply do not have to force to change the status quo by any meaningful iota. You may see this as tragic but I don't find living in fear an appealing state of being.

 

[timtofly]

My 8 year old is pretty convinced that a large asteroid is going to hit the earth right after he graduates from high school.

 

[Leonel]

My theory is that so many people are miserable because .. well.. let's face it, this culture of consumerism that's so prevalent in the west doesn't make you happy in the long term..

You buy buy buy until your credit card is maxed out just so you can have that latest gadget, a bigger tv, an $800 watch, or whatever. People are putting themselves in debt and living cheque to cheque.. So much stress! And for what? So that your friends can see how cool you are? How much you can afford?

Materialism.. it's a bunch of bs and it's crazy how many people buy into it..

I prefer a much simpler life, free of a lot of that stress. All my credit cards are paid off and I usually only buy things when I need them. I don't even drive a car! People don't get that.. In the end for me it means more money for overseas trips, less maintenance, less stress, more walking, and a healthier warpus with stronger legs. Yeah, every once in a while I'll splurge on something, but I can afford it.

Your possessions aren't really that important.. and when you don't have many - that rare splurge will lead to a lot more happiness than a splurge every 2nd day.

Precisely. Although I don't have a credit card myself, I realized this with video games. I would hype myself up for a new game and play with it until I got bored only to repeat the cycle of excitement and boredom over and over again.

 

[Miles Teg]

From discovering previous centuries through reading, and mostly the 19th century and early 20th century, i can say that it does appear that the cultural level of the world was higher than that of today

Well yeah, duh. You're sampling the best cultural output of a century and a half, and comparing it against the modern world where you don't have the luxury of that filter.

lack of high-level education

Well technically the level of higher education in our country is continuously rising, and the number of people who have had the chance to study at universities and colleges is orders of magnitude greater than it was in the 19th century. But don't let that get in the way of your nostalgia.

The later seems not so difficult to account for, since in a space of half an aeon mankind went from horse and carriage to airplanes, computers and finally the internet.

I'm sorry, you're looking at technological improvements over the last 500 years, and then comparing that to the scientific progress in what, the last twenty years? And you don't see anything at all wrong with that picture?

My dad told me that it is an era of change...the Euro-americans led the whole human beings since ceuntries ago...the Mesopotamian did in the copper ages...perhaps...a new age has come.

The tone sounds pessimistic, isn't it?

First of all, you really need to stop listening to your father's pseudo-philosophical talks. Second, the idea of non-white people achieving cultural and technological parity with Europeans doesn't actually scare me.

 

[WWTVICTOR]

Precisely. Although I don't have a credit card myself, I realized this with video games. I would hype myself up for a new game and play with it until I got bored only to repeat the cycle of excitement and boredom over and over again.

Have you being bored with Civilization series?

First of all, you really need to stop listening to your father's pseudo-philosophical talks. Second, the idea of non-white people achieving cultural and technological parity with Europeans doesn't actually scare me.

?




The tone of this thread seems suffocating and sorrowful. Our world is marching towards dystopia such as Brave New World and 1984.

I have those expressions in my mind always since I have gone to college. The politics here is no good and the economy is becoming worse and worse. Everything is hid behind politics and economy, but they don't do well obviously. Everything is not cheerful and encouraging...In my place, it is really a place which can tell you what is a 'time of change'.

We don't face a problem of lacking high-level education, but surely did in the past. "Knowledge is power", "Knowdege can change one's fate", those mottos now only apply in underdeveloped countries and natives in hilly farmlands. Personally, I think that most people have their basic physical needs but short of mental and moral ones, the gap between people are wider and wider and without communication. The society based on mutual-trust become fewer and fewer, people are becoming more narrow-minded and selfish. Selfless actions, or even emotions are really rare nowadays. People are borrowing credits while very few of them bring them back on time, just spend them extravagantly and sometimes even without reason, spent just only for spend. These behaviours and doings are not only found on men, but governments do too. "Consider it thrice before you take action."-said Confucius, but no one seemed to be impressed by his teaching.

From discovering previous centuries through reading, and mostly the 19th century and early 20th century, i can say that it does appear that the cultural level of the world was higher than that of today. The modern era seems plagued with the aforementioned blatant and circular consumerism, lack of high-level education, and an overall sense of alienation of the individual with technological progress.
The later seems not so difficult to account for, since in a space of half an aeon mankind went from horse and carriage to airplanes, computers and finally the internet.

Personally i am not of the view that as a whole the world was ready for any such drastic change. I am sure not many people actually pondered the long-term effects of the internet for example, when they formed it as an experimental program. Now it is here to stay, but did it make our life better?
I could go on about the net, but this is not a topic specifically about it, but the whole age.

Well, cultural is vibrant with life as long as the world is stable, pre-war and after-war periods. Books, musics, arhitectures, et cetera are sufficient forever as man's imagination is unlimited and indestructible, depress and upset only affects the author's writings and works.