marjoram_blues wrote:Greta wrote:marjoram_blues wrote:Do you seek comfort in 'Philosophical Counselling' ?
Do you say Stuff the World and Everyone In it ?
Do you read the news and wonder about Alternative Facts ?
Do you need a new dictionary to translate what is a traitor?
Do you stop asking questions...
...and simply accept...
All Things Must Pass
Yes, that probably covers a lot of it :)
Re: #2 "stuff the world" - only the human world. The culture. The judgements. The unfairness. The cruelty. The pushiness. The propensity for human probosci to find their way into others' business. I escape from all that to the garden, the dog and local bushland.
Early humans gained what they needed to survive from nature and then sought solace and security from nature's harshness with other humans. Modern urban humans gain what they need to survive from other humans and then seek solace and security from human harshness in nature.
Yeah, I'm currently in 'Stuff the Human World' mode :)
And yes, doing a bit of both - seeking out some others and breathing in fresh air; out walking and talking. Or on here...for what it's worth.
It sounds like you are most fortunate in your escape world.
Still, I have less patience these days. I am becoming a grumpy old "get off my lawn" cow. After some decades where many still believed in kindness and compassion, today kindness is equated with gullibility and compassion with contemptible hypocrisy.
The contempt given to those those expressing sensitivity or compassion for the weak has been shocking to me. I see it as a remasculinisation of society, presumably in preparation for war. There is increasingly withering contempt for anything deemed even vaguely feminine - women, gays, compassion, peace, gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, beauty, refinement - and even intelligence.
So bullying is back in vogue after some decades of relative clarity. Calmly exchanging ideas and information is giving way to fighting, where ad hominems are increasingly accorded greater value in the public conversation than logic and reason, which of course is partly why the US is now run by The Don.
As Prince Charles noted, the lessons of WWII are being forgotten and, while he's not the most credible source, I think he's far from the only one noticing the flavour of the times. I suppose we now know how long it takes to go from "Never again" to "Let's fight again" - around 60 years, or two generations. Lessons of history are famously not leaned from one or even a few disasters, but a repeated pummelling until the message gets through the thick hominid skulls of multiple generations.
As you noted, I am lucky, and have more chance to retreat from it all than most. However, the ugliness is almost ubiquitous online now. As a school bullying victim and later an anti-bullying advocate I find it hard not to engage bullies online. I want to resist rather than submit/leave. I have to let it go, though, because if you associate with negativity enough - even if in conflict (or perhaps especially so) - you take on exactly that negativity yourself. The US is suffering under this issue - having focused so much on Muslims that they have become remarkably more like those puritanical prejudiced patriarchal autocrats in a short time.
In truth, any president could easily destroy Islamic fundamentalism within a decade, but they aren't allowed to do so. All that's needed is to spend the trillions that would have spent on fighting in the middle east on developing renewable energy solutions ASAP to replace fossil fuels and thus starve the terrorists funds.
Of course this can't happen due to vested interests. Everyone must suffer so fossil fuel companies can maximise their profits with their expensive 20th century infrastructure - and they are being enabled by those whose salaries we pay to represent
us. So it goes. Seemingly China will have to lead the world in developing the renewable energy solutions. Reducing oil use is the only realistic answer to trouble in the middle east and the best way to alleviate these "times of trouble" generally, although one has the sense that whatever is done will be too little, too late. We are lucky to have lived through relatively civilised and stable times. While things are getting worse in most areas, living conditions for most people are still the best in human history.
Which brings us to "all things must pass". I like to think that whatever comes out of the upcoming craziness will grow to be greater than what came before, as has always been the case for billions of years.
Sorry, I rabbitted on a bit.