The Idea: The author waxes philosophical about how he can be so pessimistic and so happy at the same time, and why he works so hard when he sees no perpetuity to what he does.
Here’s the gist of a recent conversation, of a type that I’m having a lot lately:
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It seems that Straw Dogs has really stirred things up for you… I’ve yet to read it; but I agree with you that while I found his thesis depressing at first, it is ultimately liberating. Finally, we can stop taking ourselves so seriously!
The most interesting point is that you want to alert your grandchildren to the likely catastrophe coming. How do you do that, specifically? At what age? (This is a personal issue for me.)
Lou: Yes, it’s paradoxical, isn’t it? It’s like finding out the best way to succeed is not to try so hard.TV: Great question. I think it depends on the individual. My older grand-daughter is 15, and she’s not yet ready. I suspect she’ll tell me, by asking me an appropriate question, when she is. My guess is two more years. The younger grand-daughter is just 6, and I’ve just given her Anne Mazer’s book The Salamander Room, a subversive first step ;-)
And maybe teaching them some pioneering/native skills; canoeing and portaging the creases and wrinkles of our landscape may be the ‘new’ old highways. Living locally. Saving garden seeds. All fun things to do without scaring the be-sheezus outta them!
My immediate reaction to “teaching them some pioneering/native skills” was if enough people learn such things then we may ….Which just means I’m trapped in my imagination. I mean, there’s the World, and there’s a Map in my mind, and I keep thinking that, because I can DREAM of changes, then that means I CAN implement those changes and therefor I MUST implement those changes.Hooked on dreaming, I think.I’m already telling my 8 year-old that she’ll see something different, and that I trust she has an animal inside. A good animal. FWIW.
Oh wow, like, everything’s all gonna fall apart, so we’re “liberated” from all that tedious work and obligaion stuff, we don’t have to brush our teeth or scrub our toilets or come up with any better solutions anymore, so that gives us more time to sit around and sneer at all the grownups as they work so hard to keep up the shallow capitalist system that we’re just gonna mooch off of till it all falls apart and we can laugh at the resulting carnage and say “We toldja so!”What sad, pathetic escapism! I remember reading that many people signed up to go to war in 1914 with the same idea: “Civilization is stilted and boring, so let’s take a break from it (and from all adult responsibilities) and have us a good old war like we pretended to do in school!”I also remember Hal “The Late Great Planet Earth” Lindsey making lots of money on a similar wave of escapism. (When the world failed to end on schedule, he settled down and now writes for WorldNet Daily; so I guess you’re not taking too big a risk here either.)
Read Concious Evolution/BM Hubbard
Hi there Dave,You may be interested in my latest post “the end is the beginning”…on the human brand:)k
Exactly Dave. You have expressed my own thoughts and my own little journey precisely. When I arrived at the conclusion that we’re stuffed and there is nothing I could do about it I was got depressed, a little angry and gave up for a while. Then I decided that one could be reconciled with the conclusion and still do things to help. It’s a very budhist way of looking at it: live in the moment, do the right things without getting lost in trying to affect a specific outcome.
And, you wrote it on my birthday. Thanks :)
You think that passing on your fear to your grandkids will result in love? You are sadly mistaken. I assure you it will result in anger and fear. You really really need to do some serious thinking on fear and get in touch with yours. Not because some dude on the internet says so but for the sake of your grandkids. Do you have any idea of the problems this kind of fear mongering causes? But perhaps you will claim to have no fear but you must know “only fools have no fear…” Well least you are admitting this attitude openly for all to see instead of attempting to disguise it in clever arty words.
Oh my god you captured almost exactly what I’ve gone through in the last few years. All my life the phrase “life is too short” sent me into hours, YEARS, of anxiety-induced paralysis. Now, that everybody’s life is too short, it is liberating, and I am able to get more involved in politics. Able to take more risks.Right after Bush got reelected, people asked if I would move to Canada, and my response was “nah, I’m going to stick around and fight out the apocolypse.” Because really, move to Canada? That’s like duck-and-cover in a nuclear war.
I am continually surprised by the persistence and continuance of superstition, religion, fairy tales, the belief in “white knights arriving at the last minute,” and pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. As icebergs larger than countries drift around the South Polar Sea – we remain confident, and content, that it will all come together just right, and just in the nick of time.
Thanks, everyone, it’s heartening to know most of my readers see my resignation as reasonable, not a cop-out, and appreciate the twin paradoxes: don’t think it will help but plan to give it everything I’ve got anyways; and pessimistic but still happy.Zach: Sorry, dude, we just bring completely different worldviews to this issue. You don’t understand mine, and I don’t understand yours. You’re trying to psychoanalyze me based on my writings, and that’s pretty brazen, especially when if you were a regular reader you’d know I have no use for psychoanalysis, a fraudulent, dangerous excuse for a profession. I don’t claim to be fearless, but I think it’s pretty presumptuous to think I’m in denial. I’m not passing on fear, or any emotion, to my grandchildren; I will, when the time is right, explain to them my personal philosophy and the reasons for it, and provide them with the readings that have influenced it. They will be free to agree or disagree with it. All I know is that the more I learn, the more this philosophy makes (perfectly rational) sense to me. Maybe you’re the one in denial?
Interesting subject and ideas; wish, you could somehow make your text printer-friendly!