I am growing increasingly distressed with the dystopian nature of the present timeline

[conuly]

I don't even know what to say anymore.

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Comments

[hilarita]

Yup. Somewhere in 2016, the US and UK switched on to the stupid, dystopian timeline. And it sucks.

[conuly]

It was already dystopian enough what with climate change and general environmental degradation!

[wpadmirer]

Same here. It's like watching the nation burn.

[conuly]

Quite literally in some parts of it.

[oracne]

This week seems especially bad, but I am also fearing my tolerance for badness has risen, and then I worry about that....

[quirkytizzy]

I struggle with this sometimes, too. I read that the human brain can handle only so much and then it just sort of goes numb. Like, it exhausts itself on the outrage treadmill (even if the things we're outraged at are legitimate and valid.)

Saw a meme on FB. It went something along the lines of "Being informed is outraging. Being outraged is exhausting. Being exhausted makes it harder to be informed." And there's just SO MUCH to be informed, outraged, and exhausted by lately...........

re: Dystopia

[nodrog]

The advantage of longevity is perspective.  You have no idea what a colossal bummer America was c. AD 1974.  There was a reason President Jimmy spoke of a “national malaise.”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/mr-sammler%E2%80%99s-city-13087.html


        Now that we live in New York’s second golden age… Hip young residents of the revived Lower East Side
        or Williamsburg need to know that it’s possible to kill a city, that the streets they walk daily were
        once no-go zones, that within living memory residents and companies were fleeing Gotham, that
        newsweeklies heralded the rotting of the Big Apple and movies like Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy
        plausibly depicted New York as a nightmare peopled by freaks…

        Central Park promenaders who now savor the lush Great Lawn or the sublime Bethesda Fountain should
        know what a heroic effort of philanthropy and policing it took to reclaim what less than two decades
        ago was a dusty, sterile, graffiti-marred wasteland where dope dealers and muggers reigned. Nothing
        you see today is the pure production of nature but springs instead from civic will and vision…

------------

It was bad everywhere, in everything.  When last did you hear the phrase, “manufacturer’s defect”?  Fatcat union featherbedding meant Detroit cars were so badly built that parts were falling off them as they drove off the lot.  “Busing” meant exporting race violence and crime into the suburban schools, which were effectively destroyed, driving the white flight farther out…  Inflation, “stagflation,” pollution…

Alvin Toffler coined the term “Future Shock” to describe a society changing for the worse, the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate social upheaval of a nation cracking apart down to its foundations.  It was an ugly, violent, sad, bad time.  [Even the fashions were infamously ugly.]

So today’s “dystopia” has big shoes to fill, and I don’t see it as anywhere near doing so…  Yet.  The bills for the 20th century’s petroleum spree are coming due and that’s only going to get worse - you should enjoy what you have while it lasts!


Updated to add:  For the conspiracy-minded, something else going on then:  When last did you hear Northern Ireland mentioned in the news?  “The Troubles,” the IRA, Sinn Fein, all of that - it was bad, and had been for decades, and suddenly clic - the fire was turned off under it and it all just stopped.  That ugly mess just cleared up like rainclouds and is gone.  How?  Why?

[jessie_c]

Stop this simulation please. I want to get off.

[nodrog]

Yo quiero cheat codes.

[pipilj]

I agree the timeline comment. We are in the midst of an extremely polarizing elections. Ot been a seven phase election lasting over month. Will be glad when counting starts next week.
Loved the article on chick pea flour. I had no idea it had become such a health fad. I personally love it when it used in flitters.

[conuly]

People use it to make mock scrambled eggs.

[pipilj]

yup I had ordered it with a lot of expectations was very disappointed with the vegan omelet :)

[conuly]

Aw :(

But I do find that scrambled silken tofu is pretty similar!

[lydamorehouse]

I keep checking at the library to see if Bearenstain Bears returns to the title *I* remember (Bearenstein Bears) hoping that that will signal a return to the proper, less dystopian timeline.

Ugh.

[nodrog]

That's an interesting idea, that I've seen echoed in various stories.  In Jack Finney’s Bid Time Return, the main character travelled back to New York City in the 1870s, and he knew he’d succeeded when he saw, actually saw a building on the skyline that he knew had burnt down in the 1930s!  In those days the arm and torch of the under-construction Statue of Liberty was mounted in Central Park.  Fleeing the bad guys, he and his girl climbed into it and he reversed the trick - and she screamed, suddenly finding herself hundreds of feet above open water!

-----------------

Updated to add:  Oh, a direct example of what you’re saying:  In P K Dick’s original The Man in the High Castle, Mr Tagomi meditates upon a piece of modern (not pre-war!) American-made jewelry, and finds himself in our world.  It’s not pleasant.  Horrified, he wishes himself back out of it, and knows he succeeded when he sees his own office building reappear.  Whew!

Quantum Edition

[nodrog]

The Berenst(E)ain Bears Conspiracy Theory That Has Convinced the Internet There Are Parallel Universes - VICE

Re: Quantum Edition

[conuly]

I was already convinced, tbh.

Re: Показуха

[nodrog]

I personally am aware of how unlikely is this reality.  For the Soviet Union to obligingly go belly-up without any thermonuclear fireworks of any kind is literally improbable - unless, as I’ve long suspected, they’d pulled the biggest con job in human history and never had anywhere near as many nuclear warheads as we were led to believe, if indeed any!! (beyond what they set off out at Novaya Zemlya).  “Power perceived, is power achieved,” but if making nukes were anything like easy Iran would have a bunch by now - they’ve been trying for years…  That may be the breakthrough revelation of the 21st century, that the astronomical sums of money and brains burned up by the Cold War US and NATO were unnecessary.

“The World Next Door” (1987)

[nodrog]

This might interest you:

        “Let It Be”

Re: Quantum Edition

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, the Berenstein Bears are also part of the Mandela Effect. Lots of people have what are essentially false memories, specifically that Nelson Mandela died in prison in 1980s.

Here's some others: https://www.ranker.com/list/crazy-examples-of-the-mandela-effect/elle-tharp

[gale_storm]

I don't know what to say either. It all makes me want to hide somewhere.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I know, hon; it's scary times indeed, and scarier yet to come. All any of us can do is prepare as well as we can for whatever may happen, and hope for the best.

I put my trust in community: we're all in this together, and the more we have each other's backs, the better off we all will be. And I say we CAN change the world; we CAN cut our carbon emissions before it's too late; we CAN stop the pollution and habitat destruction; we CAN stop all the myriad forms of human exploitation and oppression; we CAN reduce our global population without sacrificing our genetic diversity... all the things we want and need, we can have; its not too late to get them. It won't be easy; in fact it'll be the hardest thing our species has ever had to do, but we CAN do it, if we put our collective Will to it.

[conuly]

It does seem like some people would rather watch the world burn.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but fuck them - they may THINK they want to watch the world burn, but when the piece of the world that they're personally standing on starts to blaze, they'll be shrieking the loudest for someone (else) to come and put it out.

[conuly]

They think they've got a backup plan. It involves prayer and/or money.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Neither prayer nor money have been demonstrated to be very effective as fire extinguishers.

[conuly]

I know that, and you know that.