Aging ("Ageing," to the obsolete)
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IdleRich
IdleRich
This is brilliantly put - dying is one thing but double-dying is taking the piss.
shakahislop
Well-known member
its the speed of vocabulary generation made possible by the internet. i was on the 6 yesterday in parkchester and there were some lads on there talking about what they called 'corpsey drill'
entertainment
Well-known member
It's interesting how when you're young, embodying the culture/aesthetics of past eras is a counter cultural strategy. You need to draw on this as proof of an alternative to the state of things. Only later can you begin to imagine change as involving something completely new.
IdleRich
IdleRich
What counts as an old person here? Or perhaps reverse it and say that a person who acts in that way is an old person. And someone who is able to resist that stiffening of the mental muscles and the resultant lack of nimbleness has in fact fought off encroaching old age - at least mentally anyhow, sadly I'm not sure it can be done physically....
entertainment
Well-known member
Also -- it never seems as though this concept existed for people in past eras themselves. Surely everyone in the 70s was into glam you think. But there were probably loads of weirdos running around listening to 50s rockabilly, listening only to classical or whatever.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I'm not sure it's as clear clut as that, lots of people like to have loads of tabs open and to flick between them, possibly with music playing on one of them. It's harder to flick between sound tabs in the same way as with text cos you will get a cacophony of sound, plus if you're listening to music it will fuck with that. Suppose you're reading three things at once and you keep flicking between them, you can do that easily and pick up where you left off when you return to a particular one, but if one was an article that was being read out loud, or even a video you were watching, then it will have moved on, so you can't just go back to it in the same way.
Also, a lot of young people these days have (like me) incredibly short or perhaps even zero attention spans, they (we) like to go on dissensus or something while they are watching telly on the sofa with their boyfriend or whatever - but you can't listen to things that depend on sound when you're doing that or else the boyfriend will tell you to shut up cos you're interrupting the film - and their surfing.
Even more the case if you want to use your time at your office job more productively by reading the news or something, sound will give you away. Same goes at the cinema.
So I think visually based information is more useful in certain circumstances, and text based is best for multitasking which we all do. I've noticed this a lot over the years, I'll be reading an article or something similar and part of it will be a sound or video clip and I'll find myself sighing in frustration and, depending on how interesting the piece is and how much I want to find out what was said, I'll either move on to something else or bookmark it for later. Similarly I have friends who prefer to leave voice messages rather than send a text which is something I find very annoying cos I either have to stop whatever I'm doing or listen to it later.
In short, I feel that the way most people use the internet these days makes text, in certain circumstances at least, the most convenient way to consume information.
I reckon that a few years ago, if people had asked me for a prediction on this I would have assumed that - cos it's easier to talk than write - as sound and visual files became simpler to create and share, and if they reached a point where they could be opened instantly by the receiver/consumer, they would naturally become the dominant form of communication, but I feel that other factors which I didn't consider prevented things from panning out that way.
IdleRich
IdleRich
This too. Also people internet everywhere - in the bath, on the toilet, driving their car - places where they don't want people to see them, or hear the strain in their voice as they wrestle to dispense with that almighty poo.
IdleRich
IdleRich
What if they've just changed?
IdleRich
IdleRich
That's weird cos I had almost the exact same experience. I just thought that I was really ignorant and that it was (another) one of those things that I'd somehow missed the explanation for - presumably I'd been away from life school that day - and would have to pretend I understood so as to hide my ignorance.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Really? I'd always understood that to be a lamentation on the cruel irony that when you're young you lack the knowledge that comes only with experience and that would allow you to make the most of that precious and short lived gift. Something akin to the sad fact that by the time you've earned enough money to buy that Ferrari pussy wagon you'd always dreamed of you're gonna be fat, bald and quite possibly impotent too.
It's very disappointing to learn it's just a grumpy old man moaning about the youth of the day "o tempora, o mores" - I find it hard to believe in fact, that reading doesn't even make sense.
Rod the Mod put it very succinctly.
"I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger"
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version
Well-known member
Albini's gonna come for you.
entertainment
Well-known member
You can say they've changed but they way it lines up with cultural trends suggests it's not really about that. I'm talking about people who want to enjoy the same cultural coordinates as they did in the past, but now the views associated with that position have shifted, so they shift along.
I'm not saying we all don't do that to a degree. But I think you have a responsibility to your past, what you have stood for. Otherwise it's all a bit too easy. It's also a matter of doing it with taste. If you genuinely wish to change, of course you should. You at least need to form some kind of irony to cover the stretch.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Feels a bit witch hunty to assume the worst always. Maybe it took the current trends for the person to realize they had some self reflecting to do?
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I don't think becoming mentally fixed as you age is inevitable, though I think I'm right in saying that neuroplasticity decreases markedly at some time in your mid twenties, so it becomes more of a struggle—plus, of course, you begin to feel less physically and mentally energetic, you have less friends, you're less outgoing, etc. (Being in touch with young people is important, too, because they'll take you to task on your jaundiced view of things sometimes.)
(I think I pretty much always looked down on younger people even when I was young myself, I don't think that's something that only develops in your 30s/40s, you always look at the young with fear, envy and derision—at least on a kneejerk level.)
According to a book wot I read, psychedelics are good for shaking things up in your calcified mind, temporarily removing obstacles that stop you forming new neural pathways in your brain, etc. There's certainly a way in which they open up your senses and mind to new ways of seeing things, and to seeing things at all—because, as you say, the more you see something the more you take it for granted.
I'm a bit obsessed with the loss of mental powers that I think is happening to me even as I type this twaddle. I feel like nothing I learn is retained. My vocabulary is withering away. I get the odd day like on Sunday when suddenly I feel mentally alert and able to rub two sticks together to get some sparks going but those are rare.
Youth is wasted on the young in a sense because when you're young you don't know what it's like not to be young. But that naivety is essential to the glory/folly of youth. If you started getting physically younger in your 40s, say, you would regain those learning powers, the libido, the ability to go on giant drug binges without feeling like killing yourself after, etc. And perhaps the excitement of that would be enough to regain the optimism? (Esp. if getting younger again meant getting further away from death.) But I think it wouldn't be the same.
(I think I pretty much always looked down on younger people even when I was young myself, I don't think that's something that only develops in your 30s/40s, you always look at the young with fear, envy and derision—at least on a kneejerk level.)
According to a book wot I read, psychedelics are good for shaking things up in your calcified mind, temporarily removing obstacles that stop you forming new neural pathways in your brain, etc. There's certainly a way in which they open up your senses and mind to new ways of seeing things, and to seeing things at all—because, as you say, the more you see something the more you take it for granted.
I'm a bit obsessed with the loss of mental powers that I think is happening to me even as I type this twaddle. I feel like nothing I learn is retained. My vocabulary is withering away. I get the odd day like on Sunday when suddenly I feel mentally alert and able to rub two sticks together to get some sparks going but those are rare.
Youth is wasted on the young in a sense because when you're young you don't know what it's like not to be young. But that naivety is essential to the glory/folly of youth. If you started getting physically younger in your 40s, say, you would regain those learning powers, the libido, the ability to go on giant drug binges without feeling like killing yourself after, etc. And perhaps the excitement of that would be enough to regain the optimism? (Esp. if getting younger again meant getting further away from death.) But I think it wouldn't be the same.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Poor old corpse
