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cimoreneDan Olson of Folding Ideas just dropped a new video on YouTube that's a 2-hour deep dive into NFTs (the stupidity! the scam! the nightmarish memes and the bad computer-generated art!), and the context of the 2008 financial crash. I found it very satisfying to watch, like all his videos, although the subject matter being so unavoidably heavy sort of reminded me even more about our dystopian present, not that I had forgotten or anything.
Really, though, 'dystopian' seems like a dated term - a term inevitably rooted in the highly context-dependent concepts of historical progress and an almost Star Trekian (Enlightenment, I guess?) sunny view of history and human nature. Aside from the historically unprecedented climate crisis/climate bubble/global warming threatening apocalypse, all the other disheartening aspects of current reality are recognizable and/or foreseeable outgrowths of the same human nature, circumstance, and historical forces that have made life into a struggle against oppressors for all of human history. Capitaliism and globalization have accelerated all kinds of bad trends and empowered all kinds of bad actors, leading to a lot of clusterfucks that weren't necessarily possible before, but they're still the same assholes taking advantage of anything they can in the same predictable ways. I don't think 'dystopian' is really a concept he leans on in his video; it's just a word that's leapt to my mind a lot to describe various trends and forces making reality a living nightmare, and this is just my train of thought about that.
I keep writing paragraphs and deleting them. I guess there's just so much free-floating anxiety and so many different things to be anxious about that it actually occupies a significant amount of brain power just like, trying to organize them mentally and remember them, let alone deal with them in any sense. Wax has been going through a bad period of anxiety lately, even physical symptoms, and it's almost laughable to talk about "why" you're anxious. I suppose the question is if anything has changed recently that could be a proximate cause of a spike in anxiety, because in the broader sense - not even existentially, like global warming or nuclear apocalypse or whatever, but like... just nationally and locally and even personally because we're living through a deadly pandemic on top of everything else and it's been going on for years and we're also mostly topped out on rage about corrupt and ineffective leadership not even taking the most obvious steps to ameliorate it - we're all topped out on anxiety, so burnt out of it that if you could permanently run out we probably all would have. You can't, which is probably a good thing when it comes to like a survival mechanism, but on the other hand, you can't just live forever at peak adrenaline, and it's getting harder and harder to differentiate threats and... triage your emergency processing power? Mostly there's not anything we can do about any of the HUGE things we have to be anxious about, not even the ones that threaten us personally in the day to day. Although next month I think we can get our (first) boosters: the SOLE exception to this! Here's hoping some corrupt EU politicians wake up to reality or the vaccine apartheid otherwise breaks before we need the next set.
Really, though, 'dystopian' seems like a dated term - a term inevitably rooted in the highly context-dependent concepts of historical progress and an almost Star Trekian (Enlightenment, I guess?) sunny view of history and human nature. Aside from the historically unprecedented climate crisis/climate bubble/global warming threatening apocalypse, all the other disheartening aspects of current reality are recognizable and/or foreseeable outgrowths of the same human nature, circumstance, and historical forces that have made life into a struggle against oppressors for all of human history. Capitaliism and globalization have accelerated all kinds of bad trends and empowered all kinds of bad actors, leading to a lot of clusterfucks that weren't necessarily possible before, but they're still the same assholes taking advantage of anything they can in the same predictable ways. I don't think 'dystopian' is really a concept he leans on in his video; it's just a word that's leapt to my mind a lot to describe various trends and forces making reality a living nightmare, and this is just my train of thought about that.
I keep writing paragraphs and deleting them. I guess there's just so much free-floating anxiety and so many different things to be anxious about that it actually occupies a significant amount of brain power just like, trying to organize them mentally and remember them, let alone deal with them in any sense. Wax has been going through a bad period of anxiety lately, even physical symptoms, and it's almost laughable to talk about "why" you're anxious. I suppose the question is if anything has changed recently that could be a proximate cause of a spike in anxiety, because in the broader sense - not even existentially, like global warming or nuclear apocalypse or whatever, but like... just nationally and locally and even personally because we're living through a deadly pandemic on top of everything else and it's been going on for years and we're also mostly topped out on rage about corrupt and ineffective leadership not even taking the most obvious steps to ameliorate it - we're all topped out on anxiety, so burnt out of it that if you could permanently run out we probably all would have. You can't, which is probably a good thing when it comes to like a survival mechanism, but on the other hand, you can't just live forever at peak adrenaline, and it's getting harder and harder to differentiate threats and... triage your emergency processing power? Mostly there's not anything we can do about any of the HUGE things we have to be anxious about, not even the ones that threaten us personally in the day to day. Although next month I think we can get our (first) boosters: the SOLE exception to this! Here's hoping some corrupt EU politicians wake up to reality or the vaccine apartheid otherwise breaks before we need the next set.
(no subject)
Date: 22 Jan 2022 08:12 pm (UTC)I am taking anti anxiety drugs and I am so glad that I am.
Glad you are in Finland with a better safety net than we have, but I know you worry about your own family.
Day by day, looking for the small good things. That's all we can do. I have cut way back on reading the news; that helps. And I have stuff I have to do to support myself, which is good, even though it seems so pointless sometimes -- insisting on commas for runon sentences, etc. But on we go. Hoping for better days.
It does comfort me that it's actually been much worse than this in human history. We are not living through the worst times that ever were. Far from it.
Glad you have your animals.
(no subject)
Date: 22 Jan 2022 08:43 pm (UTC)I actually don't read much news in full, or directly, anymore, and I have cut way back on my Twitter intake, which is where I get most of my links to global news stories.
I haven't taken a benzo in quite a long time, but my dose of SSRI is pretty high, so I guess I'm taking them daily too (even though I think of the SSRI as an antidepressant, it's really both).
I'm not just grateful to live in Finland - I'm even glad lately that we moved out of the 'big city' (of like, 150k, lol) to our little island-bound rural archipelago town of 16k (but it's a two grocery stores, two general stores, one main street town - most of the 16k is spread out over farms and several other islands). Our current town is a lot safer, because there are fewer people and they meet other people less often. I'd be at much greater risk in retail in Turku - I'd probably have to consider just not working in retail until the situation changes if I lived there. We still haven't had any infections in the 17 staff at my store.
(no subject)
Date: 23 Jan 2022 03:00 pm (UTC)My sister has taken antidepressants for chronic major depression for 20 years and I am so grateful her current combo works for her so well. Menopause is screwing with it a little but she is hanging in there.
ALL THE HUGS
(no subject)
Date: 23 Jan 2022 03:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23 Jan 2022 06:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23 Jan 2022 08:08 pm (UTC)The thing that caught my attention, and which I think he remarked on, and I definitely saw in the comments, was the similarities between the sort of bottom-level crypto-bro and people caught in MLM's, the sort of desperation to/compulsory belief in the success of the venture.
(no subject)
Date: 24 Jan 2022 11:51 am (UTC)