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Everyone I know is brokenhearted

Zunder

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All the genuinely smart, talented, funny people I know seem to be miserable these days. You feel it on Twitter more than Facebook, because Facebook is where you go to do your performance art where you pretend to be a hip, urbane person with the most awesomest friends and the best relationships and the very best lunches ever. Facebook is surface; Twitter is subtext, and judging by what I’ve seen, the subtext is aching sadness. I’m not immune to this.

I don’t remember ever feeling this miserable and depressed in my life, this sense of futility that makes you wish you’d simply go numb and not care anymore. I think a lot about killing myself these days. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it and this isn’t a cry for help. But I wake up and think: ****, more of this? Really? How much more? And is it really worth it?

In my case, much of it stems from my divorce and the collapse of the next relationship I had. But that’s not really the cause. I think that those relationships were bulwarks, charms against the dark I’ve felt growing in this world for a long time now. When I was in love, the world outside didn’t matter so much. But without it, there is nothing keeping the wolf from the door. It didn’t used to be like this when I was a kid.

I’m not getting nostalgic here, or pretending that my adolescence and my twenties were some kind of soft-focused Golden Age. Life sucked when I was young. I was unhappy then too. But there was always the sense that it was just a temporary thing, that if I stuck it out eventually the world was going to get better — become awesome, in fact. But the reality is that the three generations who ended the 20th century, the Boomers, their Generation X children, and Generation Y, have architected a Western civilization that’s kind of a **** show.

Being born in 1978, I fall at either the tail end of Gen X or the beginning of Gen Y, depending on how you look at it. I became an adolescent at the time Nirvana was ushering in a decade of “slacker” ideology, as the pundits liked to put it. But the reality is that I didn’t know a whole lot of actual slackers in the 1990s. I did know a lot of people who found themselves disillusioned with the materialism of the 1980s and what we saw as the failed rhetoric of the Sixties generation, who were all about peace and love right until the time they put on suits and ties and figured out how to divide up the world.

I knew a lot of people who weren’t very interested in that path. The joke, of course, is that every generation kills the thing they love. The hippies became yuppies; Gen X talked a lot about the revolution, and then went and got themselves some venture capital and started laying into place the oversaturated, paranoid world we live in now. A lot of them tried to tell themselves they were still punk as ****, but it’s hard to morally reconcile the thing where you listen to Fugazi on the way to your job where you help find new ways to trick people into giving up their data to advertisers. Most people don’t even bother. They just compartmentalize. And I’m not blaming them.

The world came apart at the end of the 90s, when the World Trade Center did. My buddy Brent and I were talking about this one night last year — about how the end of the 90s looked like revolution. Everybody was talking about Naomi Klein and anti-consumerism and people in Seattle were rioting over the WTO. Hell, a major motion picture company put out Fight Club, which is about as unsubtle an attack on consumer corporate capitalism as you can get. We were poised on the brink of something. You could feel it.

And then the World Trade Center went down. And all of a sudden calling yourself an “anticapitalist terrorist” was no longer a cool posture to psych yourself up for protest. It became something you might go to jail for — or worse, to one of the Black Camps on some ****hole island somewhere. Corporate capitalism became conflated somehow with patriotism. And the idea that the things you own end up defining you became quaint, as ridiculous spoken aloud as “tune in, turn on, drop out”. In fact, it became a positive: if you bought the right laptop, the right smartphone, the right backpack, exciting strangers would want to have sex with you! It’s no wonder that Gen X began seeking the largely mythological stability of their forebearers; to stop ****ing around and eating mushrooms at the Rage Against The Machine show, and to try and root yourself.

Get a decent car — something you can pass off as utilitarian — and a solid career. Put your babies in Black Flag onesies, but make sure their stroller is more high tech than anything mankind ever took to the Moon, because that wolf is always at the door. And buy yourself a house, because property is always valuable. Even if you don’t have the credit, because there’s this thing called a “subprime mortgage” you can get now! But the world changed again. And kept changing.

So now you’ve got this degree that’s worth ****-all, a house that’s worth more as scrap lumber than as a substantial investment, and you’re either going to lose your job or have to do the work of two people, because there’s a recession on. Except they keep saying the recession ended, so why are you still working twice as hard for the same amount of money? We started two wars, only one of them even marginally justifiable, and thousands and thousands of people died. Some of them were Americans, most of them weren’t. The world hated us again. It’s psychically oppressive to realize you’re the bad guy.

Of course, for a lot of the world, America had always been the bad guy…but we didn’t really know that before, because we didn’t have the Internet in our pocket, to be pulled out at every lunch break and before the meal came and when the episode of Scrubs on TV dragged a little, and before bed. We were encouraged to immerse ourselves in the endless flow of information, to become better informed, because knowing more about the world made us better people.

And maybe it did, but it also made us haunted people. Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “****, ****, ****,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? So you’re haunted, and you’re outraged, and you go on Twitter and you go on Facebook and you change your avatar or your profile picture to a slogan somebody thoughtfully made for you, so that you can show the world that you’re watching, that you care, that it matters.

But if you’re at all observant, you begin to realize after a while that it doesn’t matter; that your opinion matters for very little in the world. You voted for Obama, because Obama was about hope and change; except he seems to be mostly about hope and change for rich people, and not about hope at all for the people who are killed by American drones or who are locked away without trial in American internment camps or who are prosecuted because they stand up and tell the truth about their employers.

There does seem to be a lot of hope and change in Fort Meade and Langley, though, where the NSA and CIA are given more and more leeway to spy on everyone in the world, including American citizens, not for what they’ve done but what they might do. And the rest of the world? They keep making more dead children.

They slaughter each other in the streets of Baghdad and Libya and Gaza and Tel Aviv; they slaughter each other in the hills of Syria; and, increasingly, they slaughter each other in American schools and movie theaters and college campuses.

And the music sucks. Dear God, the music sucks. Witless, vapid bull**** that makes the worst airheaded wannabe profundities of the grunge era look like the collected works of Thomas Locke. Half the songs on the radio aren’t anything more than a looped 808 beat and some dude grunting and occasionally talking about how he likes to **** *****es in the ass. The other half are grown-ass adults singing about their stunted, adolescent romantic ideals and playing a goddamn washtub while dressed like extras from The Waltons.

The music sucks. The movies suck — I mean, they didn’t suck the first time they came out, in the 1980s, but the remakes and gritty reboots and decades-past-their-sell-by-date sequels suck. Indiana Jones is awesome, but nobody needs to see a geriatric Harrison Ford, lured out of retirement by the promise of building another mansion onto his mansion, running around with ****ing Shia LeBeouf in the jungle. And besides, we’re all media experts now; we can spot the merchandising nods from the trailer all the way to the final credits. There’s no magic left. It’s just another company figuring out a way to suck the very last molecules of profit out of the things we cherish, because that’s what corporations do.

Everything is branded. Even people. People are “personal brands”, despite the fact that, by and large, you can’t figure out what most of them are actually even good for. They just exist to be snarky and post selfies and demand that you buy something, anything, with their picture on it. You actually know who Kim Kardashian is.
In an ideal world, you’d be as unaware of her existence as you are of the names of the Chinese kids who made the futurephone or featherweight laptop you’re almost certainly reading this on. In an ideal world, Kim Kardashian would have spent her life getting sport-****ed anonymously by hip-hop stars in some Bel Air mansion, ran a salon, and either died of a coke overdose or Botox poisoning.

Read the full essay at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/
 

sodbuster

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Well, I'd turn off most of the national "news" used to FORM you opinions to get you to go the way the elite want you to. Read henry haslitt's book "economics in 1 lesson" [or something like that} and Bill Bonner's Hormegeddon{may not be out yet, I got an early bird offer}. They won't make the world a better place, but you will understand it better.....
 

Vulpine

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Forest through the trees.

De-program yourself by submerging yourself in philosophical study. Avoid radio, tv, newspaper... avoid all modern inputs for this exercise:

"Monk up" and read Walden by Thoreau. It's on audiobook on youtube if you prefer.
Then, read 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.
And, if your head hasn't exploded yet, warm up to Ayn Rand with The Fountainhead, then graduate finally to Atlas Shrugged.

Read all of them rapid succession without a break. Pick one up, ingest it, set it down, next, and next...

You'll be able to see through agendas like a jedi!
...as ridiculous spoken aloud as “tune in, turn on, drop out”.
:nono:
You know what I see going on these days? Well, let me give you the puzzle pieces and let you put them together, if you can:

1. Ammunition Shortage
2. Government Surplus website discontinued availability of "Big Green Trucks" to the American public recently.
3. "Earned Income Tax" Credit for women and children, not single men. Men are dropping out of workforce and being replaced by higher educated women because good paying factory jobs went overseas.
4. New "FEMA" camps. Lots of prisons.
5. Every time I go to the store, the "good stuff" is gone, and chineez junk at twice the price has replaced it.
6. Convenient and timely flood of orphan Mexican kids being warehoused various states instead of being shipped back. (See also: Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones)
7. China (a grossly overpopulated nation) lifting the "one kid per couple" ban.
8. Crappy economy?
9. Lastly, the torrent of rights-limiting legislation imposed on the citizenry.

Buckle up, dig in, or just be "broken hearted".
Indeed, "Get up, Neo. Get up, get up, get up..."
 

Colossus

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You need to go on a long hike. A LONGGG hike. For 4-6 months. No Farcebook, no Twitter, no news, just you and the woods and the strangers you meet. No wonder you are depressed, man. That read like a post-modern suicidal manifesto if I've ever read one. The world has gotten to you because you are so much a part of it.
 

jimjam

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outstanding!

I don't think I have ever read something so succinct about my generation or the way I feel. Exactly!

One thing I heard from someone once, and perhaps we all feel this way but once we get into out 40s, we look on the past with regret and to the future with dread because nothing we can do can ever change anything. Hence, the present sucks.

And, one of my own observations, if I may: We all like to have our hipster friends, meet up in trendy bars and talk about our cool music and what our opinions are and how we go kayaking, blah, blah, blah. We all like to think that our lives are rich, robust and vibrant, unfolding in the nameless canyons of a majestic city. But the truth is that our lives are not rich, nor robust or vibrant. Our lives are impoverished, feeble and dull, pissed away in the dark side of nowhere.

Oi! Oi!
 

jimjam

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Incidentally,

Hunter S Thompson said something along the lines of, when thinking of the sixties, that he could look back and see that we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

I've often felt this way about the nineties. There was a definite feeling in the air. I can't describe it but you know what I'm talking about if you were there immersed in it. What happened?
 

SteR

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Danger said:
There are two great books which I highly recommend that talk about the "waves" mentioned.


They are economic based.....

War Cycles, Peace Cycles by Richard Kelly Hoskins.
The Fourth Turning by William Strauss, written in 1997, before the unraveling and crisis.

In War Cycles, Peace Cycles we learn about how money works and why it creates 20 year cycles of War and Peace. If you want more detailed knowledge you can read more on Kondratiev who was a Russian economist imprisoned to Siberia for showing that Capitalism would not fail, but it would bend very far in first prosperity and then recession.

Once you understand WHY the cycles occur and where we are in the cycle, then you can read "The Fourth Turning" which does a fantastic job of articulating WHY each generation sees things as they do.

Those of us born in the 70's are called "Nomads" by the book We are transitioning from a Third to Fourth turning at the moment....which kicked off in 2000. Per the book below....
Going off topic here but I couldn't get my hands on that damn book.. they don't seem to have it anywhere in the UK. If I want it I have to ship it from the US for around ~£40 .. is it worth that much??
 

Zunder

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Errrr, Colossus and others - you realise this is not my essay, right?
I did put the link to the website containing the full essay down the bottom.

But, I will say some of it hit home with me, and might offer up a few discussions points over the usual "how long do I wait to text a chick back after the first date".

I chuckled about the Khardassian bit: "In an ideal world, you’d be as unaware of her existence as you are of the names of the Chinese kids who made the futurephone or featherweight laptop you’re almost certainly reading this on. In an ideal world, Kim Kardashian would have spent her life getting sportfvcked anonymously by hip-hop stars in some Bel Air mansion, ran a salon, and either died of a coke overdose or Botox poisoning."

Priceless!
 

jimjam

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Perhaps it should be moved to the Anything Else forum.

Nevertheless, another point I wanted to mention. The author seems to feel that the nineties ended with 9/11. And while this may not be totally untrue, I believe the seeds were planted long before. I', specifically talking about the last Woodstock festival they had. What was it, 1999? 1998? When all the drug-fueled violence and insanity happened.

I remember speaking to an older friend of mine at the time. He wasn't at the original Woodstock, but he was old enough to have experienced the "sixties." Anyway, he said that the first Woodstock was about more than the music. The one in 1998 or whenever he last one was, wasn't even about the music.


Anyway.....this is when it ended for me.
 

Kailex

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To Jimjam's point... I think the 90's ended pretty much, as soon as AOL and Time Warner announced they would be merging, followed by the .Com bubble bursting and then 9/11. We forget all of these events happened between January 2000 and September 2011 (Well, we don't forget 9/11, obviously)... but the rapid economic growth in the 90's was derailed completely within the next decade.

Different times now. Funny how shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and a few others vary so greatly from anything we see now, even in society.

At a time when technology doesn't defer so much in the last 5 years, never has the word "anachronism" meant so much in so little time.

To add to the original essay's point... I'd actually abbreviate the title, "Everyone I know is broken".
 

Colossus

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Zunder said:
Errrr, Colossus and others - you realise this is not my essay, right?
I did put the link to the website containing the full essay down the bottom.
Oops, missed that part!! I thought that sounded like odd writing from you...:eek:
 

Zunder

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Colossus said:
Oops, missed that part!! I thought that sounded like odd writing from you...:eek:
Heh heh, no worries mate.
 

The_411

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I think there needs to be a revolution of sorts. I always get the most humor from when someone tells me my vote matters and that if you don't vote you can't change the system. I tell them if you voting in a corrupt system you are just perpetuating the illusion of democracy and the only way to remove the problem is through violent uprising.

Human history has been changed by those who take up arms.

It feels like we've come to a point where technology is the opiate of the masses and the isolationism is intended to feed the consumer machine and prevent people from getting together to revolt against the systematic abuses of the common man.
 

jimjam

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@ kailex

Orwell said something to the effect that if a governed society has an extended period of economic prosperity, it follows there is a surplus of time and wealth afforded to the society. Therefore, it is the government's role to pilfer, for want of a better word, said time and wealth. This is done through the commencement of wars.
 

jimjam

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Whoops!

Sorry...

In other words, wars are not waged against a certain country or enemy. Wars are waged by the government against the governed.

And a revolution sounds nice, but try getting most people to give up their beer, their gill, television, phone and all the other bvllsh!t to fight a revolution.

Good luck
 

the_stig

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Kailex said:
To Jimjam's point... I think the 90's ended pretty much, as soon as AOL and Time Warner announced they would be merging, followed by the .Com bubble bursting and then 9/11. We forget all of these events happened between January 2000 and September 2011 (Well, we don't forget 9/11, obviously)... but the rapid economic growth in the 90's was derailed completely within the next decade.

Different times now. Funny how shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and a few others vary so greatly from anything we see now, even in society.

This thread made me pause to reflect upon my youth in the 90's, and what a different world it was. It was kind of a bland decade, but life was much more simple, people were happy, quality jobs were abundant and obtainable, crime hardly worth a second thought, society much friendlier and pleasant, felt like anything was possible.

Fast forward to 2014: If there's one emotion to describe the mood, I feel like "No hope" would be it. I can't help but wonder and worry where we'll be in 2030.
 

Malcontent

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Was born in `78 and could have written the excerpt you posted. I share all those thoughts mentioned.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning getting ready for another 10 to 12 hour workday and say to myself, "This is life? Will I still be doing this in ten years?"

Same disillusionment with women. It used to be easier to get a girlfriend. And I didn't have to tell her about boundaries because she already had them.

Fragmented society. Etc.
 

expos

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jimjam said:
I've often felt this way about the nineties. There was a definite feeling in the air. I can't describe it but you know what I'm talking about if you were there immersed in it. What happened?
I agree. I was thinking a lot about the 90's, not just because I spent my teenage years in that decade, but because I long for the simplicity, as the 90's was the really THE LAST decade where things just didn't seem all that complicated.

Regardless, the OP's diatribe was pretty good. I found myself agreeing with everything written.
 

jimjam

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@ malcontent

Sometimes I wake up in the morning getting ready for another 10 to 12 hour workday and say to myself, "This is life? Will I still be doing this in ten years?"

Same disillusionment with women. It used to be easier to get a girlfriend. And I didn't have to tell her about boundaries because she already had them.



You better believe it. I've been doing what I do for twenty years. Just got laid off and all I can do is sigh relief, sleep late and work out. I honestly ask myself if I can put myself through another twenty years of it. The honest answer is I don't know. All work destroys your soul. The trick is to find a balance somehow.

And in the nineties, when I was in my twenties, feminism and the whole riottgrrll bvllsh!t were just graffiti on a bathroom wall. Things were a lot easier with women, or perhaps I feel that way because I was younger and things were easier. But I can't get past the fact that women didn't have as great a sense of entitlement as they do today. Of course, maybe the women I knew were a lot younger and weren't as hip to these things.

Nevertheless, things have a momentum of their own. Whether it be culture, society, water, electricity, sounds, whatever. You can not stop anything from moving forward, even if the path it's on is destructive.

Somebody help us. We're fvcked....
 

backbreaker

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it's the internet.

i work on the internet, i have to be on, but outside of this site, i really don't view anythign else. no twitter, no huffpo, no instagram, nothing. it gets to you. we wren't made to have this much information available at all times.


random day 10 years ago


get up in the morning, eat somehting, go to work, get off work, change clothes, go grab something to eat, get a few drinks, play twited metal with friends,, go out and shoot pool, go home and go to bed.

random day 5 years ago

get up, check phone lol. go to the gym, check phone. oh **** some random black guy got killed in Florida for nothing. finish workout, come home, watch news, get on twitter, damn look at all these hot ass *****es that i will never sleep with lol. go to work, check reddit while at work, read thread 'why do black people have it so hard in america' followed by " i'm a 28 year old virgin who has never had sex and i keep getting rejected" followed by "i have this guy friend who is soooo great, he's amazig, but there is no spark, how do make it known to him that i have someone else im interested in'. damn lol. it's rough out there. go home, get on twitter, damn obama done gave poor people more money, racists come out everywhere lol. go out, try to have a drink, everyone is on phone, go to phone and type "why girls are ignoring me and staying on phones when they are out in public", only to read a 200 post thread from women who tell me that picking up women in public places, private places, through friends, thrugh dating sites, thorugh anything basiclaly lol, is impossible. Depressed as ****, go home, get on internet, watch reverse gang bang henti porn lol.get on facebook one more time, see girl that you really had a thing for last year is now engaged. FML




now


i come here, i work, and when i'm not 1. on here, 2. working, 3. horse racing i'm not on the internet. and I'm so much happier.
 
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