Hello.
General thoughts: would like to have the courage to delete my Facebook account once and for all. Basically entirely disillusioned with the direction in which the society I know is heading, etc. I don't even want to talk about the things I love anymore because I loathe the world so much I feel like I'll contaminate the things I love by mentioning them in the presence of 'the world'. Etc.
My life, I think, is now fuller than it ever has been. How full? … Not very. Of late I've been thinking about death a great deal. This is nothing new. But the shading of my thoughts and feelings has changed in a way I have noticed, serving also to refresh some old feelings in relation to death. Certainly it is reasonable to believe (and this is the emotional reality in which I tend to exist) that life is mostly behind me now. But more than that, I feel the nearness of death as I have not for some time. The horizon of my life seems close, with nothing beyond its rim. I am engaged in more projects than I ever have been before, and I have to ask myself, will I live to see them through? I cannot help feeling that it is touch and go whether I will live to see any of them realised. I understand that in one sense this is irrational, and I may live to be 87 (and yet still not see those projects realised?); at the same time, it is highly 'rational' if one wants to use such a repellent word. People die at any age and from any one of innumerable causes. I may not even be singled out; it could just be part of some cosmic catastrophe wiping all organic life from the surface of the Earth.
So, I must ask myself, then, What if I don't live to see those projects through (some of them nearer to my heart than others)? Have I achieved anything of what I set out to? … Very little. A fraction of a percent, if I am being generous to myself. So… I exist currently in that trough of helplessness between waves, having seen all that I have attempted come to nothing, and making further attempts in limited time to do better, to make good. Do I mind? At this point, I am rather too tired to mind greatly. Besides which, I have learnt to be philosophical (for better or worse, etc.).
But still, but still… When I go to Sainsbury's and pay for my porridge and tea and Beecham's Powders and so on, I pull money from my pocket along with crumbling tissues and so on, and often, with the money, I accidentally pull out a ring on a chain that was given to me. No one quite knows the burden of the ringbearer but the bearer himself. There is something. There is something for which I must live a while longer yet… if I can only live long enough… just long enough… to put it into words… but not so boldly into words that it becomes contaminated by this loathsome world. Or perhaps subtlety is the worst (that is, the easiest) way to become contaminated. Perhaps the best way to hide a thing is to make it obvious. Judging by experience, at least, that would seem to be a fair assumption. But whichever way I choose, subtlety or straightforwardness, it will not be easy. It will take time and care and dedication. I cannot help thinking that one way or another I will die prematurely, from this point of view. I am involved in the lives of others, and they will know it for the first time only then, and they will turn around, realising it is too late, and ask, "What were you saying?"
Anyway, I must get back to work.
that’s the ‘machinery’ that keeps us all busy wondering and hoping; engaging in life with the assumption that it matters.it would be quite an accomplishment to let it all go. and just be… but my experience is that you can’t survive that way unless you are a holy man in india. :idea:we have to push on, i think, or we won’t feel right about life. i have to have my own aims, desires, dreams. and it’s always possible that someday i will be satisfied. just sayin… :happy:
Yes… It’s a wonder that it (human life) carries on the way it does. I think if life were a telephone cold call I’d have put down the receiver by now; it would have been clear long ago that someone was just stringing me along. Still, there’s always… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2u-NCzJsO4
i dig everything when there’s energy. i think of energy as interest or love. then on the wave of inspiration with no expectations, i can go out and enjoy this life. energy is precious. and there would really be no reason to live if i didn’t have any energy or interest.
That’s very true. Though hopefully not nuclear energy. I’ve just been sent this and have been pondering it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_QDihrKkGs&feature=mfu_in_order&list=ULI don’t have enough information to know how far to trust this. Unfortunately, it’s really badly made, which, if the facts are accurate, does not help to get the point across.
Yes, I was wondering the same thing. I’d like more information really. I do feel that I have ties to Japan, though I haven’t been for six years now. I’d like to go just to see how things are.
shocking. and i heard that the japanese are trolling for tourists with offers of free transportation… phew… that’s a scary video. i also watched half of the promo on the housing offered in bangkok. which made me suspect that it’s some kind of grand scheme ripoff. a very popular technique of criminal salesmen is to scare people; second only to ‘free’
http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/fallout.asp just one tidbit. but it exposes the arbitrary dissemination of deliberate misinformation. the australian agency denies publishing the map.
Yes, I see. If the map were true then millions of people along the west coast of America would have died of radiation poisoning by now. I suppose this is stating the obvious, but the terrible thing about this kind of disinformation is that it has the ‘crying wolf’ effect; when the real wolf comes along, no one will believe it.
exactly; which makes me wonder at the selfish kicks that people get doing this kind of thing. like who creates viruses? why? is it possible that there is such a thing as ‘conscious evil’?a clue may be in the story of “the boy who cried wolf”. the boy is lonely. no one pays any attention to him. he needs attention, even if it’s disapproval. maybe… i can understand that. but deliberate harm? i don’t get it.
There are, of course, people who say there’s no such thing as evil, and I do have some sympathy with that point of view. However, I am also open to the possibility that evil really does exist, and that it is qualitative rather than quantitative – in other words, it doesn’t depend on scale but on intent. But I’m not entirely sure I could argue convincingly that evil is something other than simply what I personally don’t like. Perhaps I could… if I tried.
evil, i think, is like the sanskrit word for sin. literally, it is a broken wagon wheel and makes for a bumpy ride. when i consider the absence of intention in general in life, (that everything happens), i see that no one can foresee the consequences of their actions and do things in a flow of mechanical and unconscious necessities, and that these happenings are always followed by justifications and a denial of responsibility when things go wrong, i have to conclude that evil is the result of ignorance and a lack of self control, or something like that.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-nuclear-planet-released-more-radiation-government-said