firefinga

Well-known member
I am not frightended either. I have lived through several "Armageddons" already : acid rain, ozone hole, HIV-Crisis, chernobyl, Trump.... and I am still here. Actually doing better than ever.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I know the super rich are wacky - trying to live forever, become young again,
Some of them, and many of the silicone Valley overlords, clearly have a God-complex. They are chasing things that used to be characteristics of the divine. Eternal life. All-seing, and all-knowing. Creating life.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty

the flaw here is that the real deal is not something you can statisticize, but something you feel and know from waking up and opening your eyes to the things around you. you need to be in touch with your instincts. this is something i feel people are losing as social media pushes forward. the ability to critically judge reality for oneself. and there are plenty of statistics going in the opposite direction. government corruption levels. literacy rates (and yet stangely higher than ever exam scores) etc. i haven't read much about it but surely the mental health levels of society both reported and much moreso not, are going in the wrong direction. more and more people are feeling empty, lonely and lost. not to mention narcisissm/self awareness levels. this is being fed every day by our internet consumption. there are kids who don't know what the world was like before this. they're addicted to their screens because it's easier than having to deal with reality.

since the internet became mainstream things have taken a weird turn. we're taking in far more info than we can possibly process. a lot of it unhealthy for us. and i don't think we're going to be able to quanitfy any of the effects this is having. i think the feeling of existence right now might be as intense as it's ever been, due to the pressures being put on us by all the info we're taking in every day. maybe we're being shown things which were always there and in fact it's the truth which we're having a hard time dealing with. i really don't know. i just know that the bbc can fuck off.
 

version

Well-known member
This reminds me of luka's boy McLuhan's notes on Burroughs:

9. The Burroughs diagnosis is that we can avoid the inevitable “closure” that accompanies each new technology by regarding our entire gadgetry as junk. Man has hopped himself up by a long series of technological fixes:

You are all dogs on tape. The entire planet is being developed into terminal identity and complete surrender.

We can forego the entire legacy of Cain (the inventor of gadgets) by applying the same formula that works for junk — “apomorphine,” extended to all technology:

Apomorphine is no word and no image — […] It is simply a question of putting through an inoculation program in the very limited time that remains — Word begets image and image IS virus —

Burroughs is arguing that the power of the image to beget image, and of technology to reproduce itself via human intervention, is utterly in excess of our power to control the psychic and social consequences:

Shut the whole thing right off — Silence — When you answer the machine you provide it with more recordings to be played back to your “enemies” keep the whole nova machine running — The Chinese character for “enemy” means to be similar to or to answer — Don’t answer the machine — Shut if off —

Merely to be in the presence of any machine, or replica of our body or faculties, is to be close with it. Our sensory ratios shift at once with each encounter with any fragmented extension of our being. This is a non-stop express of innovation that cannot be endured indefinitely:

We are just dust falls from demagnetized patterns — Show business —

It is the medium that is the message because the medium creates an environment that is as indelible as it is lethal. To end the proliferation of lethal new environmental expression, Burroughs urges a huge collective act of restraint as well as a nonclosure of sensory modes — “The biological theater of the body can bear a good deal of new program notes.”
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i wanted to say something wise in respect to this quote from the article thirdform posted a while ago but forgot what to write, it fits here tho

Meanwhile, news anchors, “decent citizens,” and politicians from the left to the right are foaming at the mouth over the looming danger posed by this “enemy within.” Anti-terror legislation, anti-radicalization campaigns and an even bigger boost to the omnipresent surveillance apparatus are supposed to turn the tide, to stamp out this rot that has infected the very core of paradise. But what they will never understand is that it is this very society that they so desperately seek to protect, with its ritualized work-party-sleep-repeat cycle, its endless sequence of hyped non-events and its almost totalitarian imperative to “enjoy,” which produces its own nightmares. When middle class youth from sleepy villages in the heartlands of Europe decide to take up arms for a brutal racket offering little more than a sea of beheadings and a death under the unforgiving Levantine sun, little else is left to be said about the supposed “triumph” of progress, capitalism and liberal democracy. In the words of a Canadian imam whose young students took off to fight for the IS: “When you don’t find purpose and meaning in life, the only thing you look forward to is death.”
 

luka

Well-known member
Violent aggressive rap music used to cheer me up but now bartys convinced them all to go psychedelic and make baby noises.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
area's affected most by climate change lay in the global south, the periphery that is already being exploited and stolen of its wealth. there will still be plenty of land to live on in case of climate change i think. we're talking about 1-5% of the global population. they don't have any reason to be frightened i think.

Yeah, this is my take, basically. Rising sea levels? Fine, don't live in a low-lying coastal region. Ever-worsening heat waves? Summer home in Norway/Nova Scotia/halfway up a mountain somewhere. Spiraling cost of basic foods? Doesn't matter when you live on Kobe sirloin and caviar. Droughts everywhere? Who cares, if you drink San Pellegrino anyway. Societal breakdown and ramping violent crime? Gated communities, armed security etc.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Violent aggressive rap music used to cheer me up but now bartys convinced them all to go psychedelic and make baby noises.

Sometimes I catch myself listening to a glum droning William basinsky album and realise I'm putting myself in a shit mood here

For some reason I'm determined to be serious and glum in private, I can't allow myself fun, I must be miserable, I never watch comedy shows even
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Today's mass anxieties and depression is the price secular societies have to pay.
Maybe true - interested in the precise details of what that deal might be though if you can elaborate.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I've never met anyone with less insight into their own internal processes than you so I'm not taking this as evidence of anything in particular. Your needs and emotions are an undiscovered continent.

I'm wondering what your edit took out :crylarf:
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't buy it anyway. Way back in 2003 you were writing a blog called 'A TIME FOR FEAR' and inventing Islamophobia. Your catchphrase is 'Doom' why would you choose 2019 of all years to suddenly stop being afraid. It don't add up.
 
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