#6 - #6

Yesterday I was talking to Oisin and saying how I felt for the first time just fed up with the New Year. And Oisin said I think lots of people feel very flat. Like there is nothing special about it.

This was good to know. I said, it is like there are two sides to myself which I always knew were there. There's is lazy side which is always about not bothering and then there is the enthusiastic side - the side which is ambitious and wants to do its best - and it I never realised that they were in antagonism. I was always either doing stuff or resting and in fact I often did not have the time to rest. 

With the lockdowns it has been like - well why bother. You cant do anything anyway and it became an excuse to not to do anything. It has been very corrosive and now that things are happening again, I fear that I am now still in this 'why bother' phase. It's kinda awful really.

I suppose it was good to admit that to everyone finally.

But also to know that 20 year olds also feel the same. I just wonder what we have done to our children. Before the reaction to the pandemic people were going to change the way we did things. Now - it has all fallen into the hands of the plutocrats. The idiots. The generation of Bill Gates and the post Gen Xer Elon Musk. The old world once more reigns. In the past it used to be First World countries which had this kind of wealth and no one questioned it. Now it is this First World of billionaires which wouldn't be so bad if homelessness and the destruction of the planet had been rectified, but everything is still going down the sinkhole of doom. It is terrifying actually. How is that one going to play out?

I used to ask how was the nightmare of the development we had pushed ourselves into going to play out and I got my answer - which is we will stop and then insist on going back to what we had - so we are fucked there. But now it is compounded by the rich/poor divide. The only thing that will solve it is a massive war - and I say this because the idiots which need to reform the system are going to have to stop behaving like idiots and this is not going to happen. The superficiality, the crass consumption and materialism, the complete lack of imagination which will be pushed into madness by virtual reality - all of that is going to go to the wall and we are going to end up in some kind of war. Plus leadership is so pathetic, so self interested, so uncompassionate... and the worst part of it all - the people have been fooled into choosing it.

The most frustrating thing to see online is how mediocre the standard of argument is. All adhominems and the use of strawmen devices. It is actually painful to watch. And people aren't interested in communicating with each other. Words are now used to dig trenches and destroy - or come up with fatuous statements which mean nothing. Why do people bother to comment? It's so weird.

The entire Covid debate now is so divided politically that it is practically useless. I listen to 4 podcasts really - three are doctors and one is Russell Brand. I however find myself listening to Megan Kelly and that is worrying. When the Right start citing Galileo and Democracy and Freedom of Speech in this very shallow manner I might add, it is as terrifying and awful as the Left citing Science - both do so in a blind way, in a way which is not really about the principle but about trying to justify their thoughts and actions. the Left has actually been a huge disappointment. There are of course people who are in the middle and who have been trying to be the voice of reason but they have been co-opted by the Right and have been very naive. It is even MORE frustrating. Instead of making sure they have picked their platforms carefully they have been captured by idiots who are just looking for different. 

The entire mess we are in is an example of how education, technology and 'progress' have failed us because when we faced the unknown the first thing we did was be terrified and terror - well we see where terror leads us. Is it the poor teaching of history in schools? Is it because of a failure of ethics? It is because of the obsession with materialism and empiricism? What the FUCK happened there?

Well here is where we are anyway and personally I am going to have to realise that I am in a motivation hole and am going to have to dig myself out of it with a shovel of some description. But at least I am not the only person in the hole. It does not feel like a new year said Oisin and I couldn't agree more. That I did not do the Holy Nights is a strong indication of that. I did read it but I felt so blah. I wonder how those people recovered from those devastating wars. I just have so much respect for them now. Perhaps this is our fate - perhaps this is what it is for us now - that we can only ever arrive at a certain peak, necessitated by some kind of slavery. Then when wealth is not shared nor redistributed it gets more and more unstable and we end up in war again. We can never bring ourselves to evolve into a stable society. Perhaps only the Scandinavians can do it - and that's because they have such a strong social contract brought about by a common enemy - the weather. This helps to unite them. 

Well all these wonderings ... It is nice though I have managed to write this over the past week. I hope I am able to keep it up.