RE: Bot and Paid For: Will Bots Be The Downfall of Social Media?
I understand what you are saying. You walk the middle path, follow "right employment" and attempt to be non-judgemental. I truly admire that. I have a hard time being that passive, though I try to be. Let me paint you a picture. It is only a slight elaboration of the truth.
Let's suppose you discover a tropical beach. The waves washing the shore are warm and perfect for surfing. The ocean is full of fish and the nearby estuary full of clams. Behind the beach is a grove of coconut palms filled with ripening coconuts; a shady place to hang your hammock. Off shore is an amazing coral reef full of multi-colored fish, eels, sponges and other invertebrates. It's like swimming in an aquarium. Shelter is as simple as tying a few palm leaves together. This is paradise. Everything is here that you could possibly need to live a happy and fulfilling life. Then someone else also discovers this hidden cove.
They think everybody should be able to come in here and enjoy it, so they plow in a road. Because access is now easy and soon lots of people arrive. They come, stay for a few hours and leave their trash behind. Another fellow starts to collect the coconuts and sell them to the tourists. Another fellow takes over the coconut grove and starts charging people to camp there. More people arrive. A rich entrepreneur comes in, buys up as much as he can and starts building small units to rent to the tourists. They are at first simple, but the demand is high and pretty soon they become more elaborate with electricity, plumbing, concrete walkways and all the trappings of civilization. Raw sewage flows out into the bay. They build a sewage treatment plant. A corporation sees potential here. They buy up all the small dwellings, raze them and put in a 2000 room resort hotel. People fly in, stay in the hotel, soak in the jacuzzi, lay by the pool and never leave the hotel grounds for the 3 day escape from their mundane lives that they pay a small fortune to enjoy.
The coconut grove is gone, buried under a parking lot. The estuary is dead, the clams are gone. Even their shells have been taken and made into souvenirs sold to the tourists. The coral reef is gone, killed by the runoff from the development and ground into sand by the waves. Without the reef the waves can no longer be surfed. The fish have moved elsewhere. No longer can you simply unroll your sleeping bag on the beach for the night. Cops will roust you and force you to leave, sometimes at gun point. Paradise is lost yet our culture calls this development.
I spent a month on this beach 47 years ago. I cannot go back. It is dead to me as the reef is to the world.
This is how life has transpired for me in almost every aspect. The same mistakes are being made that were made 47 years ago. It's happening everywhere at once, not attenuating but accelerating. Wisdom is dissipating. People are less connected to reality than ever before. Nowhere is as nice today as it was yesterday and it will be even worse tomorrow. How do I reconcile this when it is needless? If this was an inevitability like personal death I could accept it. It isn't. It needn't happen. It is damaging and pointless. I do what I can but it is not enough and will never be enough and that is not okay with me, no matter how much I try to let it go.
I realize this is the Kali Yuga and that evil is in ascendance and in the bigger picture none of it matters at all. But this life I'm living is a small, focused picture. I can go inward and escape or try to make a difference and continue to suffer. For some of us that outward path is the imperative, the path we must follow. Life is but a gauntlet you can never finish.
Thanks again for your insight.
Oh, I don't want to talk you into my outlook on life. I find it useful also for others, who visit your blog, read different perspectives and might take something out of mine. The two of us are good, aren't we :-)
Maybe you find a certain pleasure in pain? I mean that seriously.
But anyway, your path shall remain yours. In case you want sometimes an annoying voice, I am your "woman" :-)
The paradise example: I can't say anything about it and you are right, that many beautiful areas are destroyed. It is more than sad that that happens.
Thanks. I'm grateful for your input. People do need perspective and I'm glad you are willing to give them yours.
Pain does not please me but I don't avoid it either. Long ago I decided that I must still have a lot of karma to work out, probably more than I can do in one lifetime. I've often wondered why I was put on a planet that is so diametrically opposed to what I feel is appropriate and from that I decided that my purpose must be to mitigate it to the best of my abilities. Sadly, it's like trying to eat consomme with a fork. Frustrating.
I guess people's ideas of paradise differ widely. It's too bad for us nature lovers that most people favor the lifeless detritus of the city to the fecundity of the wilderness because their efforts destroy what to me is precious. Far from being humane, humanism will ultimately destroy humanity.
Keep in touch! :)
I wonder if you're really aware of your importance?
The pain (suffering) that you bring into the world has a strong effect on your fellow human beings (the same applies to your confidence and wisdom). They are infected by your grief, they become discouraged or angry or sad if you remain consistent in it. Your sorrow at the destruction of nature causes others to absorb this sorrow. It is difficult to resist this because many people infect each other with their suffering. Since I cannot judge where in your life a balance takes place and who and where you are the one who encourages and supports, my question is where this happens at the moment (outside the Internet).
I would like to contradict you with regard to the concept of people's lives and that they prefer the rubbish. I myself serve as an example. The living conditions and habits from childhood on are very strong. People need an income and that's what they get from their work in the city.
Living in the countryside or further out, without being connected to a job or a community, is for people who see isolation as something good and get along with very little. Not many people have that courage. I can't blame them.
Staying in the city and doing everything possible there is also a way of encountering life. I concentrate on the exemplary activities of those who serve as my role models and I am a role model myself. The families, women and young adults I have helped so far are many. Some people accept it, others only a little and others don't accept it at all. It's beyond my control.
Do you deal with good examples and projects in the world that give you peace? Do you find these things deliberately?
Here is a project you might like:
and another one:
My answer to you is also partly written because your pain touches me and I recognize myself in it. If I were quite relaxed and would not be impressed by this, my answer would be much shorter. I know, this is a bit weird:) - but I also know that you understand.
I cannot accept responsibility for the pain of others. I'm like the dentist. I can sympathize with your pain, but I'm going to drill the rot out of your tooth anyway.
The first noble truth is that life is suffering. The other three are about dealing with that fact. We're not here to cater to the whims of the ego, to up our self-esteem at the expense for examining what's really going on. Dealing with pain is an individual's responsibility as is dealing with happiness. They are the poles of equanimity and you already seem to understand and have a handle on regaining equilibrium.
I'm a writer, not a dentist. People don't want to hear that their house, our house is on fire. I causes them grief. I tell them they need to sweep the cobwebs from their eyes, wake up and do something about it, become pro-active. They say the fire department will come and put out the fire. I tell them that the fire department is a meme, a blatant lie, that there is no fire department that is going to take care of it. I tell them to at least get rid of all the trash they've accumulated, that it will make the fire burn faster and they tell me they'll sweep the kitchen floor and put away the dishes. It wouldn't bother me so much except it's my house too and I can't put out the fire by myself. I really can't throw up my hands in frustration and decide to go back to bed.
I've written before about being raised in captivity. It's hard to relearn how to live within the boundaries of the natural world, but it is possible.
All resources flow to the cities, to the people who cannot sustain themselves without infrastructure, to the detriment of the countryside. I've watched the forests disappear, and the chaparral covered hillsides needlessly sink under the weight of concrete, glass and tarpaper.
When the trucks stop rolling, its 3 days until the food is gone. If the electricity goes out in the winter and you have no wood stove people will soon be in the streets burning their furniture and fighting off the cold and the hungry, those folk who only care about their own survival. Civilization is a thin veneer and not my idea of security.
This is the sort of article that gives me hope. I especially like the idea that everyone needs at least $1.90/day to live a good life. Would that provide a "good life" for you?
Of course, it also states that everyone needs electricity, which is nonsense. My German grandmother thought that electricity was an extravagance, that electric lights would eventually drive people insane and when indoor plumbing came into vogue, she refused to have a toilet installed because she didn't want people doing that inside her house. My mother thought that luxury was having hot water on tap. I tend to agree.
The article at least emphasizes that the Western lifestyle is unsustainable, that we all will have to do with much, much less if the environment is to remain viable.
Thank you for the video links. I'm deaf and so cannot hear them. I'm sure these people are doing their best to make the world a better place. I'm sure most people believe they are doing the same. Keep up your good work.
People hear their house is on fire every day. Through reports like the one you linked me here. You and me and no one in the world will ever save it by reporting like that. Such articles come from people who don't consider that these reports spread their own fear and pain, making the recipients depressed and hopeless. You're not in the world to exacerbate the suffering. You're here to see that you're overcome with suffering. You can do this when you realize that your hopelessness and anger about the stupidity of others just falls back on you and that the ego you are talking about is merely accustomed to indulging in pain.
If you think that your lifestyle is the one that everyone else should cultivate, then you are living in the illusion that people can do the same. They can't - for many good reasons I cannot list - otherwise this is going to be a book. Such changes in the concept of life are not radical changes. Radical is what deters.
Don't you have empathy for those who haven't realized how things really are? And don't you have appreciation for those who strive every day to do their part to be of service and help where they can? It is not only direct environmental efforts that bring about a change for the better. It is the psycho-social efforts by means of an ethical basis that do this.
Where do you experience in your personal encounters the fulfillment that can give you the satisfaction that you nurture someone to encourage them despite their blindness in this or that area, so that you have the certainty of having helped yourself and this person afterward?
If I imagine that I work with my young adults and I would pass on the burden of my resignation to them, what would I have achieved? That at one point in their lives they would have absorbed so much suffering from their surroundings that the Flood could also come after them. This has already happened, with you, with me, with everyone. If I let myself be impressed by the fact that my last hour was almost over and nature is about to collapse, what motive should I have for wanting to change anything?
I told you, if you insist on looking at your suffering and that of others, I will not keep you from it. It's your choice. I am a very practical woman and for my part, I have decided not to want to feed on it.
Yes, those fire alarms are indeed annoying. I suppose it would be easier to simply cut the wires instead of doing something to put out the fire or stick my fingers in my ears and go la, la, la so I can't hear it and tell others who still hear the alarms going off not to worry about it so they can stay calm, be at peace and pretend nothing is wrong. The problems our planet faces are totally unnecessary and preventable, but why try to do anything about it? I'll recycle my plastic water bottles and buy an electric car and everything will be just fine.
The Titanic is unsinkable, after all. Keep dancing. Guess I'll belly up to the bar and order a few double Scotches to make it all go away, grab a table with a good view of the iceberg and listen to the orchestra play on even as the dance floor begins to tilt.
The Earth has faced mass extinctions before and survived. Cyanobacteria lived through all of them and they will live through this one too. Humanity isn't very important in the greater scheme of things. Cyanobacteria is. Something else will rise in humanity's stead, maybe something even more interesting, something that isn't so delusional.
Humanists identify with humanity. That is the source of their pain in the face of human suffering and the threat of annihilation. It's not the warning bells that cause the pain.
One must transcend identification with the human form to identify with consciousness directly. I'm an environmentalist. I no longer identify with humanity, but I do identify with the biosphere, that mantle of life that covers the Earth in a living skin. That is the source of my pain. I have compassion for all life and lament the rapidly expanding extinction of species. I have little compassion left for individual humans or even humanity as a whole, since they do have the ability to transcend but steadfastly refuse to evolve and instead choose to indulge in their own comfort and dominance at the expense of all else.
It is not my intent to share my pain. It is my intent to slap people in the fact to wake them up. That might hurt a tad. Those who sit and cry will be miserable and pass from this sphere as will those who engage in denial. The rest might rise up and do something about it. Those are the people I'm trying to reach.
This post is now dead. I'm happy to continue this thread but let's do it elsewhere.
Did it ever make a difference in your encounters with people when you beat them? Which one of them then pondered and developed further on that basis?
Is it the case that you have ever thought that your fallibility fell back on you and that you were accused of what you accuse others? How does it fit together that you reject humanity, when at the same time they are just as much a part of the organism earth as all other life? My conclusion from this is that you differentiate between your humanity and being part of nature and make a separation. That means you're a pest, too. And as long as you think of yourself as such, you will behave like that. I can see that you're turning yourself down.
By showing people their ruthlessness and wickedness, the only thing that results from this is discouragement and feelings of guilt. You mock their tears and their grief on top of it. As long as a person feels guilty, there is little good in it. I've heard about environmental degradation and disasters since I was a teenager. Up until well into my thirties, all this drove me to feel overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of saving the world, feeling guilty and small in the face of the effects.
I have only learned to acknowledge my impact in the world as something good when I turned my back on the world's do-gooders and catastrophic enthusiasts and took examples that love people and nature alike and do not reject themselves.
I find Walk the talk a very suitable term for it.
You are wrong when you think that only an environmentalist is the true keeper of the planet. Be one, but acknowledge what others do to help and not destroy.
How can I take you seriously if you refuse and your humanity? Then who am I talking to?
You think it has to hurt to make someone understand? Have you been reasonable as a child and are you now that I have provoked you and let you see my anger? What does it mean when I hit you?
You don't differ much from those who think you just have to shake people long enough to wake them up. They don't do that. They never did. Your shaking is merely an expression of your pain that sticks firmly to you and that you intend to share with others. By putting water on your mills and confirming how bad things are. Did such people stand by you in a crisis, were they strong and loving to you?
What do you think your isolation is?
Haven't you already reached people who are worth reaching? How many more must there be? How many to confirm and share the fierce pain with you? Where is it your responsibility to refrain from doing so?
Don't you have a long life and how do you look back on it?
I do not expect any response to all of this and I have no interest in being addressed indirectly. I asked you very direct personal questions and you answered me with generalities.
I am interested in you. That's all. Believe it or not.