FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Keith Whitener on November 28, 2009, 01:09:07 AM
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How often do you think that yourself or say it to someone else? What's weird about being alive TO YOU?
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At this moment, you mean? Quite a bit.
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I think wasting our time/life on things like work and taxes and shopping is weird. We need to get back to when living was about finding something to eat, and avoiding being eaten. We've got survival sickness, as the Noise Conspiracy would say.
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Stay off the reefer, Ben!
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Stay off the reefer, Ben!
ha -- look what one night under Frederick's tutelage did to the poor kid.
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Yes.
Getting to witness firsthand such a major acceleration in technology is both amazing & terrifying. I bought a box of old national geographics the other day, and there's one from 1940-ish with an ad for IBM. the "calculator" the guy is standing next to is the size of a Yugo. My shitty pre-paid cell phone probably has more computing power than that behemoth.
At the same time, I believe we are certainly going through some serious, SERIOUS psychological growing pains as a species as we move rapidly towards post-humanism. Most folks tend to block out certain facts like, hey only 500 years ago people finally crossed the Atlantic and now they've gone to the goddamned MOON and we have the ability to split a friggin atom. These facts are so mind-blowing that we tend to just go "meh - sure we can clone an animal, when's Biggest Loser on?" in order to deal with it. I think if people really thought about major things like the size of the universe on a regular basis, our society would pretty much fall apart.
You know what's GREAT, though? we get to share the planet (for the time being) with THESE!
(http://www.blog-my-world.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/jellyfish.jpg)
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I blew my mind with that thought, and the other thought about I am inside my head but other people see me from the outside like I see them when I was I think 6 or 7. I don't know what the usual age is for that.
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It doesn't feel weird to be alive, but I do think there are many aspects of life that are strange.
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Throughout the entire length of recorded history and the eons of time before that, you were slowly but surely coming into being. Once the arrival has taken place, however, it's relatively instantaneous.
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If I may, I'd like to refer you to the thread "youtube (Now inexplicably featuring 50 other video sites)". I think you will find the answers you are looking for there.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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I wanted to address individual posts.
However, I decided to just say Thank You Ben.
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If I may, I'd like to refer you to the thread "youtube (Now inexplicably featuring 50 other video sites)". I think you will find the answers you are looking for there.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Talk about getting it.
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I think wasting our time/life on things like work and taxes and shopping is weird. We need to get back to when living was about finding something to eat, and avoiding being eaten. We've got survival sickness, as the Noise Conspiracy would say.
We should start a FOT commune.
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Stay off the reefer relaxant drinks, Ben!
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Ace Frehley LEAD GUITAW SHOCK ME!!!!!!!!
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I have farming connections. The commune is halfway there.
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One thing I find odd is that despite all people being people, so many still focus on that which separates them from others rather than that which brings them together. What Kickthebobo said, for example, is a big part of what it means to be alive today in a society/culture such as our own, and yet tremendous amounts of people are still lacking in compassion and care for others. The absence of awe puzzles me. In a shopping center, I don't hear anyone saying, "Holy shit! This orange came from Florida! A truck drove it here! That truck was assembled from many parts that were flown in from all over the world! People made all of this happen!" That is amazing. It's the sort of thing that in the past would prompt someone to clasp a stranger by the arm and exclaim, "Wow!" while jumping with joy. We don't need to go to the moon to feel this sort of exhilaration and camaraderie.
Maybe more people just need to speak up.
I guess I've gots to get me a megaphone and start talking about oranges.
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A society that constantly marveled over how oranges got to their mouths would probably never even get off their asses, let alone travel to the moon. In fact, I'd posit that it is exactly our propensity towards boredom that drives us to advance at all. If we weren't able to take things for granted, nothing would come next!
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Yet still, most of the really and truly awesome advances are in video games and in gadgets that facilitate communication between douchebags.
I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
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I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMSXV8eT0w[/youtube]
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I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMSXV8eT0w[/youtube]
This is the sort of project that would benefit from some International collaboration, specifically with the U.S. Hip-Hop industry.
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If we weren't able to take things for granted, nothing would come next!
This is true, but what people very often take for granted is each other. And it makes me wonder: where else is our effort better spent if not helping other people? It seems to me like our progress has not taken us very far. Sure, we might slowly be eradicating extreme poverty (and condoning sweatshop labor in the process), but it seems like there's problems in our own towns that are going unaddressed. We're all divided when it comes to where our effort goes. We could even have ostensibly the same system we have now, but with augmentations so that our efforts are more other directed as opposed to self directed. The difference I see, for example, is that right now we are all trying to lift individual heavy stones instead of building a machine that allows us to lift all our stones at once as a team.
But, also odd to me, is that people don't often talk about the weights they're shouldering.
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Partially that is the quarter-to-quarter mentality of the corporate world. Also, the financial bubble led to a bubble in people, with most of the best and brightest across the spectrum of smartness devoting their mental horsepower to devising new and creative ways of making really bad investments look like good ones. At least that's been reversed. I am hopeful about the future.
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I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
HAVEN'T YOU SEEN BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA???
By the way, can someone explain the last episode of that stupid show?
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They found our earth and then they had a robot dance party.
I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
HAVEN'T YOU SEEN BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA???
By the way, can someone explain the last episode of that stupid show?
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I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
HAVEN'T YOU SEEN BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA???
By the way, can someone explain the last episode of that stupid show?
I bailed out after the Season finale where they revealed Drunk McCain and those other people were secret Cylons.
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A society that constantly marveled over how oranges got to their mouths would probably never even get off their asses, let alone travel to the moon. In fact, I'd posit that it is exactly our propensity towards boredom that drives us to advance at all. If we weren't able to take things for granted, nothing would come next!
The key word is probably, Joseph.
Regarding the moon: seems we're headed in the wrong direction.
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I would really like to see more progress on the robots front.
HAVEN'T YOU SEEN BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA???
By the way, can someone explain the last episode of that stupid show?
I bailed out after the Season finale where they revealed Drunk McCain and those other people were secret Cylons.
spoiler alert!
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMSXV8eT0w[/youtube]
Your future boss, sheeple.
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the financial bubble led to a bubble in people, with most of the best and brightest across the spectrum of smartness devoting their mental horsepower to devising new and creative ways of making really bad investments look like good ones.
You are thinking my thoughts! Except I imagine a scientist who says, "The brain is really amazing. My job is to make as authentic smelling fake poo as possible. The key is to make it look real so that the appearance makes it feel like it smells worse! The brain is really amazing. I use mine to make fake poo." WEEPS
Ya'll got fake poo!
What do you mean quarter-to-quarter mentality of corporate world? You mean the ease with which others are taken for granted? If so, what can be done to combat this? I am of the opinion that regulation can only do so much and that the mechanisms that lead to this "taking for granted" must be themselves addressed. I.E. dehumanization/devaluation of the other and the encouragement there of.
Also, what makes you think that it's reversed or the "best and brightest" are putting there efforts elsewhere now?
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Keith-
On quarter-to-quarter, I just meant the short-term thinking that dominates in the corporate world. Sure, they have to make money and survive, but not giving thought to the long-term means we miss out on all the really cool things that require long-term projects that don't pay off fast. At one time you did have cool things like Bell Labs or whatever, but they've pretty much been gutted. Some of those people went to Google, so we'll see what they do.
I was thinking since the economy went in the toilet maybe a lot of physicists went back to physics, mathematicians back to math, doctors back to healing the sick, etc and so on. I could be wrong about this though, I guess those companies are still doing OK somehow. I did see some statistics saying Finance is a less popular major now, and Engineering is more popular, so maybe we see the effects down the road a few years.
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I guess those companies are still doing OK somehow.
TARP.
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Ah, yes, short-sightedness! I would say that taking others for granted is shortsighted.
Here's another thing: we are all a part of the world in the same way that a finger is a part of the hand. We all experience emotions. We all are trying to make sense of things. Yet rarely are we comparing emotions or the ways in which we make sense of things. (I'll post Marc Maron's joke on this later!) That is odd to me. A lot of confusion would be cleared up, I imagine, if people favored disclosure to secrecy.
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I guess those companies are still doing OK somehow.
TARP.
Funny how that works, yeh.
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What's weird about life?
It's weird that I've found myself doing stuff I once said I'd never do. I said to myself at one point "I'll NEVER set foot on stage without a band." Then I started doing solo gigs. Then I basically quit music. And here I am now 3 years into doing stand up comedy.
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I really just wanted to address some posts briefly at first, but this thread has sent me on a radical thought tangent of massive essay length. I apologize in advance, but am thinking about turning it into a 20 minute speech with humorous slides for the TOM convention. Honestly, you won't be missing anything but some of my darker world views if you skip reading it. I'll just say to Keith Whitener that I feel we are thinking along somewhat similar lines, I'm just more bitter about it - perhaps to my detriment. Fredericks, I see your point and agree there is a chance for mankind to both fully appreciate everything while not turning into mind mush, I just don't see how likely that is given the state of people. Also, my name is actually spelled Josef, but you can call me whatever you want because you're awesome. Everybody else better recognize the F!
So, to my long ass tangent. While I know fundamentally that we are moreso today than ever facing the great need to do so, I don't think its likely that we'll ever again live in a way that makes literal sense on this planet, given the long term effects of culture. This is my most bitter pill, truly, and always will be. I believe we are now, on the whole, living out of whack with a way of life that kept us going long enough to be alive in staggering numbers as a species today. I also believe that if we put the same effort into fixing the web of problems this whackness creates as we do into killing each other for money and pride, or even just spent as much time pondering that as we do the Bottom Line, we could maybe go a good ways towards fixing it. The rub is that I simply don't believe we will.
At this point in advanced history, there are very few key people who hold a massive sway over everything, no matter how paranoid that sounds. Only They, acting in concert, would need to change their minds for any changes to really take purchase on the world at large, no matter how much power we the people are led to believe we have in our forcibly unheard voices. It is only among those with the hoarded power, aka, 1% of humanity, aka, the uber rich and powerful, that change can be truly affected, and of those few who could really change things, the sad fact is that they simply never would. It's far too amusing and profitable to ever let go of the status quo, for those that benefit from The Way Things Are. And I'm not even talking Tom Scharpling/Doddy from Miami rich and powerful. 20$ snickers bars aside, the Rich are not the Wealthy and I believe that is an important, if not obvious, definition. The Rich are still mostly "us", especially if they weren't born that way. The Wealthy are something else entirely, from conception. They have no interest in us beyond being fodder for their insane incestuous legacies. They are to be feared.
Worse still, without resorting to something as archaic and uncivilized as actual revolt, we the proletariat have absolutely no real power to exert over this system that profits so few and harms so many. We are all forced to rely on it for our very livelihoods, that is to say the livelihoods of those of us who wish to participate in society and live "on the grid", and in that way become compromised by it, subject to it, less able to resist it. Short of moving to a solar powered shack in Montana, we can fight in our small ways, trying to beat injustices on a grassroots collective level, but it never will go anywhere even close to as widespread as it would need to be to inspire civilians to make the concerted effort. We stand divided across the boards on issues that have very little to do with surviving and thriving as a species at all, lost in our own worlds. Worlds, that are then in turn lost in slightly larger worlds that are at conflict with other worlds, and so on. In this way, the small groups that care and want to help are unable to ever bridge these complicated divides and thus are marginalized by worlds so much louder. These cells of change even become thought of in the minds of the people as an annoyance. I believe this is because these ideas on a subconscious level threaten the status quo that ostensibly keeps everyone it claims for itself Safe and Secure, which nobody wants messed with and for good reason. Revolutionary ideas and the actions that follow remind people too painfully of the whackness burning its way deep into their guts, the whackness they couldn't help but buy in to, that is now throwing them off kilter and making them something not quite human. It's basically the plot of District 9, without the cat food.
Now to prove my point that we are screwed, lets imagine for example that there even was an idea centered around creating and living with the world as it should be, that could be delivered in just the right message to break through all of that conditioning that divides us, enough to be really heard. Lets say then that it was able to implant itself in enough peoples minds to make them work together, creating a a power to be reckoned with, a power that can change things. Unless this group is planning on change through fear like a terrorist group (let's say it isn't, for the sake of argument) then it would have to be at least twice as powerful as the most influential corporate lobby today. This is already a fairly near impossible task, but let's just say that happens anyhow, and this force of change manages to get above the all the cynicism and the threat of punishment for acting collectively against the systems wishes, finally getting their communal step in the right direction towards peace, harmony, and the well-being of everyone put on the table of humanity.
No matter what this idea is, by it's very existence it is acting in defiance of the original Big Idea of The Man. This Big Idea as I understand it is essentially to make the man The Man by being as ruthless and dominating as possible on all playing fields, most particularly ownership of everything important, thereby becoming as rich and powerful as possible. The Big Idea then (now) is to retain that power, influence and control for as long as possible, just because. At this point, I think you would be hard pressed to deny that one of the main characteristics of The Man would be that he fights to hold on to what is his, and always has better lawyers and armies. Any fighting chance we had as a people separated from these monsters of industry, I believe went out to pasture with the Model T Ford. There are no guns left to fight with, because they stockpiled them YEARS ago, and put up walls with guns on them to keep everyone else out and away. It's basically the plot of There Will Be Blood, without the religious thing.
The basics we require as humans, the things that make us feel disenfranchised and weird when we don't have them, are being driven further and further out of our hands every day. Nobody eats for free now and many don't eat at all, when everyone used to eat for free by rote in the past, without the shame of welfare. The food we do have, is being corrupted and proprietised by people who have no concern for the past or the future, but only the Benefit of the Now, when razing the ground and corrupting the flesh of flora and fauna alike is the best money making venture. Clean water, clean oceans, are quite nearly a thing of the past, because of industrial/commercial neglect of duty. We used to love each other because having family and friends meant you survived, not because we chose to feel for each other based on our flippant emotions. These same emotions are now controlled on so many more levels by so many outside forces, all of them openly endeavoring to change who you are at your core, solely so you buy more shit, act a certain way, and don't think too much about it.
Granted, this all sounds like the ravings of an LSD hippy even to me as I write it, but I challenge anyone to say it isn't true. We as a whole have given up our rights to some of the most basic things in the world, essentials that brought us up and made us genuine marvels of existence. The trade off we made for an increased longevity of life (though never so long as to not turn a profit) and pasteurized supermarket orange juice in a ready to pour bottle was too great to pass up, the Benefit of the Now was too appealing. What passing alien species could even blame humanity for that? They would only fault the small portion of our nature that is terrible and rapacious, as the flaw that doomed us all.
When I think about how it, the best way I can ever imagine life making sense again for everyone, as improbable as it may be at this point, would be to cherry pick from the best that we have achieved, our knowledge, our technology, our functioning social systems, etc. and then work carefully and dilligently to incorporate that into the way of life our biological nature calls for, the same one that allowed us to live as care takers and receivers of the earth for millennia, save for the last relatively few years. Not all of the societal tenets we have now would work in this environment obviously, but instead of compromising the basics like we do now, those tenets would be the compromise. I think it is the single most important thing we could do to never again give up personal control of our basic needs as implied by our nature, that being to simply live in balance with our world and ourselves.
The gut wrenching thing about that is, to even start to do even half of what that kind of change would require, would be a monumental, impossibly large task. The concept stage alone would take way longer than it will take for someone to figure out a way to scrape out the rest of the resources of the planet to manufacture hologram DVD players that let you talk to other hologram DVD players in real time. No matter how I shake it down, it's an impossible dream that simultaneously is the only one that makes sense, a paradox that can only read "we are screwed".
To me that fact isn't to be marveled over, but to be horrified by and then delusionally forgotten, so one can go happily enough about ignoring this madness, donating just enough to charity to get that nagging thought off ones back, chatting with your Indonesian friend over DVD hologram, eating our delicious, nutritionally bereft food, and secretly knowing that in some way beyond our control, it is dooming us all straight to fucking extinction.
I truly think with that as the situation, and happiness as a necessity above all others, we might as well just enjoy the basket ride and stop thinking too much about how the sausage gets made. What other recourse do we have? If you have one, I'm game, believe me.
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I only read the first few paragraphs, but I know one thing... someone needs a hug and an ice cream sandwich!
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How dare you sir. I will take the hug, but you can keep the ice cream sandwich of the establishment, as I'm lactose intolerant.
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how 'bout a tofutti cutie?
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I think you're right, Joe. Unless you want to live like a crazy person, there's no way to survive in our culture without contributing in some way to our self-destructive insanity. I've found that I can mitigate the despair that this causes by learning how to do some useful things, and doing work that helps other people in some small way.
I'm also considering fleeing to the countryside and starting a doomstead.
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Joe,
Thanks for writing that. I cannot respond to everything you wrote, but I want to respond to some of it.
We are definitely living in a manner that is different from the one that evolution worked so hard to sculpt. Hell, we have created environments that adapt to us, as opposed to vice versa. And all of this has opened the gateway for billions of people to exist at once. That is creepy. But is it dooming? And secondly, is it any more dooming than not having created this world for ourselves?
I feel like there is an implied "cliff" throughout your writing that we as a species are going to fall off. Odds are there is no cliff. There will be ebb and flow. There will be fuck-ups and there will be self-correction. True, our ranks may be thinned dramatically at some point. And yes, that may be brought on by our stumbling across a new virus during deforestation, or biological warfare, or even a technological innovation that is so awesome we never leave our houses and so never reproduce. But a hypothetical "more natural" culture - one with fewer people because it did not sell out like we did - could just as easily be brought low by a sudden outbreak of small pox, so are we really dooming ourselves any more than a more "authentic" culture?
I am not trying to sound like Pangloss, but I do believe that our species is capable of improvement. It is more than just a belief...I see it. Violence world-wide is far less than it was even a century ago. Websites like Kiva exist so people like you and I can provide micro-loans to people thousands of miles away. And what's more, the arrival of Kiva did not require the actions of the wealthiest 1%.
In the end, each individual is dead meat. That is for sure. But I do not believe that humanity at large is going to experience a sudden death. And even if we do totally fall off of a cliff, and even if we do meet that end due to the fact that we are GMO'd and antibioticized to the gills, as opposed to a methane burp or meteor hit, I think that proves nothing except "something was gonna get us sooner or later."
Does that make any sense?
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The part of being alive that is weirdest for me is the problem of qualia. I have never been able to explain it to myself. Pinker. Dennett. Kinsbourne. No one has been able to give me an explanation that makes me happy. It is the only thing left that makes me think that some characteristics of the natural world are outside of the realm of Science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
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The First Noble Truth of Buddhism has long been translated into English as "Existence is Suffering." A new translation suggests that instead the Buddha was saying that the First Truth is "Life is Unsatisfactory."
I feel like a kid in a Charlie Brown special: "THAT'S IT!!!!"
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(http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/modernmaterialist/2008/11/baby-smoking-pot.jpg)
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It's easy to get tied down in doomerish thoughts, and I'll admit to having my fair share. For some reason, the last two months have been really bad in that regard. But I think that for every fact that points toward a dire future, there's another fact that gives hope for optimism. Yes, the planet is wildly overpopulated, but the fertility rate in developing countries (where most children are born) is dropping and has been for decades. Yes, our diet consists almost entirely of shit, but community gardens are sprouting up everywhere and calls for sustainability in agriculture are as loud as they've ever been and are daily growing. Yes, we waste huge amounts of energy and pollute like motherfuckers as we do it, but solar and other renewable technologies are making huge strides and will only become more viable in the future.
Joe Lunchpail, I understand your hopelessness and sympathize completely with it. We may be doomed, but the moment we accept that, we might as well all just lay down and die right then. We have to keep trying, even if nothing comes of it.
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If Josef doesn't get any guff for the five page dissertation of doom. I'm going back to posting my edited chat collections.
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I'm actually really surprised I got no guff myself! I think its because I gave the option up front to skip reading it. To set your minds at ease, I really am a happy person. In fact I am happy right now, and was when I wrote that. I enjoy being alive, and do not go through my day thinking these large doom and gloom thoughts, well, at least nowadays. I've battled depression obviously, but I won that a while ago. I just was thinking hard on that subject of "what is the point", and wanted to write it out.
One point I'd like to clarify is that I don't believe that there is some immediate doom coming, outside of the accepted possibilities of meteors, nuclear war and the like. Worse than that, I believe we very possibly will just keep on going in this weird disjointed way until over a span of time we become insane, or weakened, or mushy enough to just not be fit to survive. I do hope I'm wrong, if that is any consolation!
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1. I'm actually really surprised I got no guff myself! I think its because I gave the option up front to skip reading it.
2. I just was thinking hard on that subject of "what is the point", and wanted to write it out.
1. its because I gave the option up front to skip reading it All I need is a disclaimer? Gotcha!
2. I actually printed it out and read it in its entirety. . "what is the point"
Circles don't have points. Ask Dave, he'll tell you.
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You must be the change you wish to see in the world, Joe. I try to be increasingly vocal about these things as a writer/journalist/thinker.
I think that it is important to keep in mind that within one’s own more framework one may be acting toward some conception of the good while appearing to be “bad” in the eyes of others. You can only do what you know, and if some people are so out of touch where they don’t know what it’s like to pay rent or commute to work, then they cannot really faulted for not knowing what they don’t know. I am unsure of how many people are sociopaths, but I do not think it is as exuberant a number as you think.
By calling them “The Wealthy”, you could be unconsciously perpetuating the very dehumanization that allows “The Wealthy” to continue the mechanisms of exploitation from which they profit it, whether it be knowingly or unknowingly. This is one of the things that needs to be address. Care, compassion, and respect for all people. The problem isn’t the people who are “the wealthy” but the exploitation from which they profit.
I think disclosure and communication is important.
I also think one-person can, has, and will continue to change the world. The question is: in what way?
Qualia is weird! But I don’t think it’d be any less weird with an explanation. And what would an explanation enail? If someone believes in the Christian concept of God, that doesn’t explain why there is a God, why God acts as God does, or how to live one’s live.
People value whatever they value for whatever reasons they provide whether they provide a reason at all. So how's about we all choose to value the same thing and go from there. I say we value people. The question then is: what's best for people? There is no one answer because the world is in a constant state of flux. So what we need to do, me thinks, is emphasize critical thinking. This is what I see as one of the fundamental shortcomings of political action today: too much concern over being he or she who he right and not enough concern for simply helping others. Helping others might just entail asking others how they want to be helped.
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I've got leaves clogging up the gutters. Come to think of it, this stove could use a lick and a promise.
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http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/brain-universe.html
We're simply living in the brain of some huge giant.
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http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/brain-universe.html
We're simply living in the brain of some huge giant.
Amen!
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http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/brain-universe.html
We're simply living in the brain of some huge giant.
Amen!
I just changed my whole theory!
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So, I'm almost done with the book "Vital Lies, Simple Truths" and I think it has really helped me gain some knowledge about why humans accept certain things and deny others, according to the psychological theories presented in the book. It is a very interesting read about why we allow things into our consciousness, how we begin to think about things in certain ways and how sometimes we begin to block things out mentally.
For this discussion, though, I think the most interesting point that relates is Erving Goffman's concept of "frames." The idea is that we all understand what the acceptable behavior is when you're watching a movie, or in line at a grocery store, or waiting for the subway. It's like we all play a certain role and understand what the rules of the social situation are. There are even "scripts" which are sequences of acts and responses that unfold within the frame, which is basically how things are supposed to happen when you buy an airline ticket, or are taking a class, or ordering food. "There are scripts for every frame and a frame for any and all events in which people interact with some degree of shared understanding." When a particular person's reality or world is shared, a frame is created. This idea is so surreal and existential to me but I love it.
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I have a feeling being dead will be weirder.