Unknown Sample

I wanted to keep this post separate.

Today I finally got my working holiday visa, which means I can stay here (in Europe) for another year. :thumbup:

While it's probably not good for any career prospects I might have, it is certainly good for my relationship as I will have at least a year to be with my gf.

I was thinking about taking a course or volunteering somewhere... I can't see working or finding work being very easy, not knowing the language. But I guess the important thing is that I'm here!

Maybe this is wrong of me, but I'm glad oil prices are dropping because it means the pipeline is probably dead, at least for the time being... and if it gets bad enough, oil production in general will slow down.

What's even better is there might be possible blowback on the current conservative government, which has been aggressively pushing the oil sands as Canada's entire economy, at the expense of everything else. This has involved muzzling scientists who can't even publish findings without the permission of the government... meaning the oil industry's own scientists are the only ones being heard.

On the other hand, it's going to be bad for the economy and the markets in general are probably going to crash. This wouldn't have happened if the conservatives hadn't backed us all into a corner like this-- and I have been saying for years that this is EXACTLY what was going to happen. But of course idiots with a high school education were making six figures out west because of it, so all that they cared about (or had the intellect to understand) was that it was making them rich.

This is sort of one of those things where I'm ecstatic that these people are getting what they deserve, but at the same time unhappy because the government has so completely and inextricably tied the future of the country to this disgusting sludge that it's going to hurt a lot of people.

But then, I suppose the good news is that a shitty economy means that exports can pick up again... and the US is still going strong (for the time being).

But yes, Canada is going to suffer pretty severely next year-- between the housing bubble that will probably burst, and the oil prices declining, it's going to be pretty ugly. I'm seriously thinking I should just take all of my money out of the market, wait for the bubble to burst, pick up some cheap land and live there.

One of my biggest faults is how opinionated I am. I don't even know why I cling to these ideas so strongly because I never actually follow through on anything, and all that it has ever brought me is stress.

I was just reading this article:

How politics makes us stupid - Vox

...and although it's got enough about global warming denial for some people to write it off right away, there is a lot of truth in it and I've caught myself behaving that way more than once.

For those who don't want to read it-- it explains that even though we have more information than before, that information surplus can equal a stupider society overall. The reason for this is because when it comes to the most crucial issues, they've all been politicized so that to most people doesn't matter if certain information is true or not... what's most important is that it supports what they believe.

I think this can be true for anyone who gets caught in your average useless online argument.

I was thinking the other day of how the Internet is probably always going to be a part of everyone's lives for the rest of my existence on this planet, and how I feel about that.

I remember reading an article about how the Internet manages to suck people in so effectively-- it does so in little 'nibbles' as opposed to giant gulps. No one sits down with the intention of spending 3 or more hours reading about things they'll just forget later, they sit down thinking they'll look at one thing and then that will be all. But then that one thing links to another, which links to another and another and another until finally it's 2 hours later and all you have to show for it is a blur.

But it's not just this that is concerning me, it's the fact that despite all the time I have spent online, I still have this odd sense of not having completely adjusted to it. It reminds me of the 'Future Shock' phenomenon, wherein technology advances too fast and people cannot properly adjust, so they experience this sort of ennui or disconnection from reality.

Future Shock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I remember having the same basic feeling when I first arrived in Taiwan. The noise of the scooters around me was absolutely maddening, but there was this voice in my head that kept reassuring me that it would all go away and everything would return to 'normal' in time.

But the next few days and even the next few weeks seemed to consist of me hitting wall after wall after wall... socially, emotionally and psychologically.

I suppose it could be just a sign of me getting older and not a case of the human race being unsuited for this sort of living, but at the same time I have to admit that there are more than a few moments where I stop and realize I have no idea how I feel about anything.

And it's not depression or anxiety, it's just disconnection, like I'm watching myself. I suppose it could relate to the fact that I haven't had a real home for over 10 years now, that I don't have my own place, can't get settled. It could also be dissociation, some sort of byproduct of psychedelic drug use or more likely, the amounts of information that I consume on a daily basis.

I have noticed changes in my vision... visual snow and halos. It's constantly taking me out of every moment I experience. I think I can describe it as derealization as well:

Derealization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I know that I had serious issues with this when I was young as I would obsess over embarrassing or guilty thoughts for months on end... I would confront them over and over, trying to examine them in some way that could make me feel alright about their existence, but always be brought back to the fact that they were permanent parts of my identity, could not be removed from existence, and could not be reconciled with a 'worthy' sense of self. Sometimes it was like there was a negative or damaging energy in the thoughts that would constantly tempt me back into suicidal thinking, or into destructive behavior, or into a general anger or hatred of myself.

Bringing this back to the subject of the Internet, and expanding on what I have said in the past (maybe not on this site)-- one aspect of communication that has been severely crippled by the Internet is that people no longer need to rely on each other as a source of general knowledge, and now can simply consult an online 'authority', to which they will quite likely defer. The accuracy of that authority isn't so much the issue as the deferral... perhaps it is 'superior' information in some cases, however I have to wonder as to whether or not this type of information-gathering is influencing the construction of our identities as well as how we receive others.

I wonder if you could ever get so much information that it could completely smother you? Or if it could gradually supplant your identity? Or steer your interests away from selfhood and towards some sort of collective identity that is more political, more rooted in statistics and authorities and sensationalism and outrage and disgust than any human could possibly have achieved on their own?

The Internet is undeniably mutating consciousness... I think we're entering a turbulent period, where it's gel or be drowned in gel.

I truly believe that the next big thing in advertising will be right-wing bully tactics. The amount of people who conform to ridiculous views out of fear of being called stupid is probably a lot higher than we will ever know.

Odo said:

I suppose I'm going to be one of those online blogging people now… not sure how long I'll be keeping it up, however.

I have just over a month left before I'm fully unemployed. This sort of makes me uncomfortable, but on the other hand, it could be worse. I have enough savings to probably get me through the next year and then some, so at least I don't have to worry about that… even though I guess burning through my savings is no way to live.

Anyways, I know that this is probably insane, but I can't stop thinking about this crazy idea I have to not start looking for a typical job and to use the year to make an independent film. I was sort of hoping to have more saved up first, but it looks like that's not going to happen and I'm getting older and this is something I've always wanted to do with my life.

I've also been feeling pretty inspired lately and have basically the whole script in my head-- I've written it so that I only need about 3 different locations, which should make things a lot easier… and there are also only 3 parts in the entire thing, so I won't need to worry about managing a big group of people, which I'm sure would be the hardest part about making an independent film.

The hardest part is going to be figuring out how to actually live while I'm making it. I'm giving serious thought to making it in my hometown… it's the kind of thing where I really wouldn't need to do a lot of moving around, and plus it would be nice to be near my parents… they're retired so they might even be willing to get involved-- ha ha… I could make a movie starring me and my parents. You know… that might actually not be such a bad idea!

Click to expand...

I wish you much success in your endeavors, my friend.

MotherWolff said:

I wish you much success in your endeavors, my friend.

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Well, it has been quite a while since then, but thank you!

Odo said:

One of my biggest faults is how opinionated I am. I don't even know why I cling to these ideas so strongly because I never actually follow through on anything, and all that it has ever brought me is stress.

I was just reading this article:

How politics makes us stupid - Vox

...and although it's got enough about global warming denial for some people to write it off right away, there is a lot of truth in it and I've caught myself behaving that way more than once.

For those who don't want to read it-- it explains that even though we have more information than before, that information surplus can equal a stupider society overall. The reason for this is because when it comes to the most crucial issues, they've all been politicized so that to most people doesn't matter if certain information is true or not... what's most important is that it supports what they believe.

I think this can be true for anyone who gets caught in your average useless online argument.

Click to expand...

I think Wired did a similar type of article. There is so much information out there (much of which is conflicting) that people are just going with their "gut", which pretty much negates everything. People have also become very politicized and resort to tribal thinking.

ImNotMyIllness said:

I think Wired did a similar type of article. There is so much information out there (much of which is conflicting) that people are just going with their "gut", which pretty much negates everything. People have also become very politicized and resort to tribal thinking.

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I'm starting to think that giving everyone a platform where they can be anonymous and free to say everything that's on their minds is probably like turning the news into high school, where the bullies rise to the top by insults, tribalism and gossip.

Of course, it's not all bad... at least, I don't think so.

I've been really sick since last Tuesday-- the worst sickness I've had in several years.

It started with chills that wouldn't stop until I was finally so feverish that I couldn't form coherent thoughts. I woke up repeatedly at night with this messed up hallucination in my head that involved a voice trying to explain to me how and why some sort of strange object or machine worked... but it wasn't like a machine, it was more like an image that had to be 'approached' a certain way. Like I was supposed to make some sort of movement towards it that made sure I missed the object, because that was somehow the appropriate way to do it.

But of course the voice was untrustworthy, and probably insane, so it was more like this annoying but powerful creature trying to show me something that made no sense, and me humoring it because I couldn't get it out of my head and I was too weak to fight.

In some ways, this is the story of my life... being unable to escape from social situations where nothing makes sense, and yet I humor everyone and pretend that what they're doing is perfectly fine. Maybe that's somewhat pompous of me to say.

Another thing about being sick-- it made me realize just how happy I can be lying in bed watching movies on my tablet. It's like everything becomes so much simpler and I don't feel any urge to be productive. In some ways, it makes me love being sick just to remove all the guilt I experience when I feel like I should be doing something. It's just really satisfying to finally have an opportunity to tell myself that no, I shouldn't be doing anything.

One week later, I'm still not getting a decent night's sleep and waking myself (and possibly the neighbors) up with coughing... but it's good to have had that experience. It was a nice change of pace, even if it meant feeling shitty.

So this is stressful:

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues - Scientific American

I guess there's a lot of ifs here-- but it seems GMO and its chemical-heavy farming is actually doing A LOT of bad things to the soil.

But you know, I suppose that one of the reasons I am drawn to stories like this is because feeling like everything is doomed means I don't have to actually try to be anything. I mean, in the long-term it doesn't matter anyways, but picturing doom is actually really relieving... it means that nothing really matters, and there's never going to be a better future, so now is it.

I read another story that higher temperatures also increase human aggression, which means there is yet another threat to human survival posed by global warming.

Global Warming Making People More Aggressive?

I wonder if it also explains Australia's high suicide rate?

I feel like I should be going outside more... trying to fit more happiness into my life. I don't think experiences are necessarily the solution... I don't know what I actually enjoy in life. Maybe hiking.

I had this idea for a story about the devil being swamped with requests from all of the people who want to sell their souls. In a future where advertising is so potent and the workday is so long that people are worn down by the work and the constant nagging to buy things, the business of souls has become a buyer's market.

The devil can even afford to offer people much less than they would have gotten when people actually cared about their souls... so instead of eternal life or huge amounts of money and fame, he starts offering less spectacular things like 2-week vacations (where it rains the whole time) or like a single night with some Hollywood actress or something. He takes college kids with no job prospects and offers them middle class lives and they immediately take him up on it.

Finally, the devil has so many souls that he stops taking them and says 'sorry, we're not buying any more souls right now... check back in a few months'.

So all the soulless people start gloating and bragging about the wonderful things that they got in exchange for their souls, and the people with souls get really jealous and even more determined to sell their souls. The soul market crash gets deeper and deeper and people panic and start selling their souls for really nice sandwiches and think they got a really good deal because their neighbor only got a lottery ticket that wasn't even a winner.

Finally they can't even give the damn things away... and even the devil is thoroughly disgusted by what he has seen. God is sitting up in heaven, having internet debates about why the great soul sell-off took place and really hopes the church will bail out his too-big-to-fail operation, just so that he can have SOME people in heaven with him.

I don't know how to end it, exactly... but then, it probably won't go anywhere outside of this journal.

For the past hour I have been staring at this:

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-view-image.html?adId=1039815863&image=7&enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

Wow is it ever gorgeous... and it comes with a business as well... but actually more than one business, because it is also apparently a bed and breakfast.

On the other hand, I can appreciate that there would be problems involved with this kind of thing and it's probably struggling as a business. Of course, that could be due to the fact that the owners seem to be following their hearts, instead of providing the community/tourists with what they want.

It's just a dream, of course.

Odo said:

I had this idea for a story about the devil being swamped with requests from all of the people who want to sell their souls. In a future where advertising is so potent and the workday is so long that people are worn down by the work and the constant nagging to buy things, the business of souls has become a buyer's market.

The devil can even afford to offer people much less than they would have gotten when people actually cared about their souls... so instead of eternal life or huge amounts of money and fame, he starts offering less spectacular things like 2-week vacations (where it rains the whole time) or like a single night with some Hollywood actress or something. He takes college kids with no job prospects and offers them middle class lives and they immediately take him up on it.

Finally, the devil has so many souls that he stops taking them and says 'sorry, we're not buying any more souls right now... check back in a few months'.

So all the soulless people start gloating and bragging about the wonderful things that they got in exchange for their souls, and the people with souls get really jealous and even more determined to sell their souls. The soul market crash gets deeper and deeper and people panic and start selling their souls for really nice sandwiches and think they got a really good deal because their neighbor only got a lottery ticket that wasn't even a winner.

Finally they can't even give the damn things away... and even the devil is thoroughly disgusted by what he has seen. God is sitting up in heaven, having internet debates about why the great soul sell-off took place and really hopes the church will bail out his too-big-to-fail operation, just so that he can have SOME people in heaven with him.

I don't know how to end it, exactly... but then, it probably won't go anywhere outside of this journal.

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I love this!!! wow. Such a perfect description on the way the world is headed.

MollyBeGood said:

I love this!!! wow. Such a perfect description on the way the world is headed.

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:thumbup:!

I really do have to wonder what people would be like if they didn't have to work, weren't distracted by cheap entertainment, and actually cared about ideas and lofty intellectual concepts that required a serious investment of time and effort to understand.

I don't think that promoting this would be altogether difficult... it's not like social engineering isn't already happening, so it would simply be a matter of the engineers changing their game plan and then providing people with an atmosphere where they didn't have to worry so much about basic security needs, and it suddenly became socially desirable to dedicate yourself to intellectual pursuits. *And as much as people want to say they wish people were 'smarter' so that they could relate to them, I'm pretty sure that no matter how smart people think they are, most people are put off by genuine intellectuals... mostly because they can communicate with them about as well as someone who speaks a language they haven't studied, and listening to them is just as exciting as watching a movie without subtitles.

But of course, giving people what they need to become better threatens the time-tested formula of using fear as motivation. Fear of failure, of poverty, of isolation, etc.

Maybe the reason people need to be motivated like this is because asking them to actually voluntarily associate themselves with a system like this is objectively absurd. No one is going to volunteer to make a small group of people wealthier, healthier, and happier than they are at the expense of their own dignity, time or potential. And there's the added bonus of being able to more easily fill the lower social positions of society, where demand is highest. No one is going to want to live in a polluted industrial area if they actually value their health, future, intelligence, etc... and you can bet the people responsible for the pollution aren't going to live there.

If the system actually cared about people, maybe people would care about the system. But it doesn't, so they won't. They will care about themselves, and try to use the system to make themselves happy. And it might even work just enough to keep people fooled into thinking it's 'natural' or 'the best system we've got', as if we've somehow reached the pinnacle of human achievements and potential (which is absurd).

But seriously, imagine if people weren't working for money, but were instead working to make sure everyone else was as happy as they were. So they would know that if they weren't happy, someone would come along and make sure that changed... whatever they needed, whether it was a new house, a friend, a ride to the mall, or just someone who will really, truly listen to them. Imagine if we taught people to be wonderful human beings instead of money-hungry success-driven careerists, and our only currency was acts of kindness. People wouldn't have holes in their hearts that they needed to fill with useless crap when they weren't busy being exhausted and wishing they had as much or more than their neighbor.

This probably sounds way too childish for most people to take seriously... which is probably a big part of why everyone is so unhappy. We grow up, and we realize that the world isn't like what we originally believed... we're not prepared for it, and our idealism ends up being more of a liability than an asset, so we ditch it while keeping all of the social strategies that get us what we want-- so we're polite, but not kind; charitable, but not altruistic; informed, but not insightful... and less genuinely interested in others than obligated to listen to them because we know that ignoring them would mean losing someone who might be willing to do the same for us.

It seems like a good way to make sure that the people who never learned how to be good people in the first place come out ahead, as they never wasted time on wondering whether a behavior was right or wrong, they just focused on getting what they want in the best way possible.

And now, because nobody is really interested in my usual, opinionated posts, here is an exciting list of my top 5 favorite TV shows:

1. The Shield
2. Black Mirror
3. The Twilight Zone (1960s)
4. Rectify
5. Generation Kill
6. Breaking Bad
7. The Wire
8. Game Of Thrones
9. True Detective
10. Star Trek (1960s)

I'm not even going to comment on them.

Odo said:

And now, because nobody is really interested in my usual, opinionated posts, here is an exciting list of my top 5 favorite TV shows......

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Why do you think that no one is interested in your "usual, opinionated posts", Odo?
I find the posts in your thread here interesting and very thought provoking. Just because I don't usually post a reply to them, that does not mean that I don't read every one of them. Just 'sayin.

Odo said:

And now, because nobody is really interested in my usual, opinionated posts, here is an exciting list of my top 5 favorite TV shows:

1. The Shield
2. Black Mirror
3. The Twilight Zone (1960s)
4. Rectify
5. Generation Kill
6. Breaking Bad
7. The Wire
8. Game Of Thrones
9. True Detective
10. Star Trek (1960s)

I'm not even going to comment on them.

Click to expand...

Now please also write a list of the worst tv shows you have ever seen!

BlueDays said:

Why do you think that no one is interested in your "usual, opinionated posts", Odo?
I find the posts in your thread here interesting and very thought provoking. Just because I don't usually post a reply to them, that does not mean that I don't read every one of them. Just 'sayin.

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Thanks Bluedays... it's good to know someone is paying attention!