Strummer wrote:We are in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave here in Central Europe, probably the highest sustained temperatures in at least a few hundred years. I'm definitely not worried about a slow attrition... together with a full-blown civil war in a neighbouring country (Ukraine) and crowds of climate refugees piling up in another one (Hungary), it feels more like being at the tipping point of a rollercoaster ride.
Pops wrote:I think it is pretty natural for each generation, each person, to think we are the apex. We each are the center of our own conscious universe after all. No real surprise we would expect the climax to occur during our lifetime. In that sense I'm pretty sure most folks look back and are surprised that things didn't change all that much or in the direction they had hoped or feared.
The more interesting thing I think is in regard to the forum, the media we're using generally, which has enabled such a diversity of debate. After 16k and whatever posts I find that what has changed the most for me personally is my confidence in my own knee-jerk opinion and certainty that things will change in a certain way. A regular guy, who reflects at all, simply can't pontificate endlessly and retain an inflated sense of his own infallibility.
I've tried to play the devil's advocate here from time to time ;^)
I've probably railed more against implacable opinion and absolutism than anything else. The thing that sets me off every time is when folks say "the fact is..." when it demonstrably isn't, which is a good portion of the time. But, turns out that the illusion of factual insight that was just as often wrong as right were my own!
Cherry-Pick Pie gets old after a while. I believe I am less convinced of anything, more surprised at everything, more open to evidence that contradicts my gut reactions than I ever have been. What could be better?
This is it. A grand mystery, a grand glass bead game.What might I have been doing with my brain at 4:30am otherwise? To me PO.com is kind of an ongoing mind massage, vocabulary exercise, and virtual barroom brain brawl all rolled into one.
GoghGoner wrote:I don't fret, I watch, continue to learn, mature, and hope to be a wise elder someday. Day-to-day life poses challenges and those come and go like waves (ie. marriage and kids). I hope to gain the same peace there that I have with the future - whatever it does or does not bring.
pstarr wrote:Hoards of African and Central Americans surging north to escape AGW/post-peak agriculture dieoff. Very soon. Hardly even tomorrow. It has begun and the clock will not run backwards.
Ibon wrote:We also have to remember that those first 20 years of ones life, we are experiencing life through the wisdom of youth that senses life through the body and less from cerebral reason. It is only the middle ages that the mind reasons with the big picture, and then alas, once we gather all the parts and start to form a whole, senility and obsolescence creeps in.
C8 wrote:Ibon wrote:We also have to remember that those first 20 years of ones life, we are experiencing life through the wisdom of youth that senses life through the body and less from cerebral reason. It is only the middle ages that the mind reasons with the big picture, and then alas, once we gather all the parts and start to form a whole, senility and obsolescence creeps in.
lay off the pipe Gandalf!
In retrospect, I would have had sex with more ugly fat women.Ibon wrote:Sit for a moment in that space as an elder looking back. Look at the balance between the moments you lived fully and the moments you fretted over all the threats.
Was it worth it?
Strummer wrote:We are in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave here in Central Europe, probably the highest sustained temperatures in at least a few hundred years. I'm definitely not worried about a slow attrition... together with a full-blown civil war in a neighbouring country (Ukraine) and crowds of climate refugees piling up in another one (Hungary), it feels more like being at the tipping point of a rollercoaster ride.
We never really arrive at a collective light bulb moment
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