Sanity Vs. Insanity

Interesting... I had a very similar train of thought enter my head a year or so ago... it really was bringing me down until I got talking to an older friend about it while we up drinking bourbon into the wee hours.

You know what he said to me?

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Damn... you're not even 40 yet and you're having your mid-life crisis already! Way to go man!

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You are not going crazy... you've just intellectually matured to the point where you can see the basic flaws of society. It's unsettling at first, but remember, everybody goes through it eventually. Some sooner than others.

Have fun! you've gained a whole new perspective. Used properly it can turn life's little ironies into a grand comedy. But try not to let yourself become too cynical.

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Have you ever heard of or read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. Check it out, it's an inquiry into values.

Hey, get some sleep eh? )

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Indeed. Both of these will help you more than anything else I could say... they are both golden.

I like Justsumguy's Perspective on all of this

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Originally posted by Infested Cats@13 July 2003 - 04:36
More and more I wonder just how insane I truly am......

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Replies: 9
Views: 175 One of the questions that I’ve been pondering lately is, Are the benefits of so much instant communication really worth the effects that it has on the world?

I’m not really sure.

See, on the one hand we have all kinds of cool stuff going on because of it. The telephone started it, with people able to communicate across the country. Over time as the price came down, people started to get them in their homes. Within a generation it became possible to speak directly to your grandmother who lived in another state, or with the police department to report a prowler, or to talk to the girl in your English class who you could never find the courage to address in person. Between rapid transportation (cars in particular) and the telephone, the world suddenly shrank a lot. It no longer took a week to get a reply from someone by mail- you could just pick up a phone and dial.

Then along came the television, and we all suddenly were able to see what was going on in other countries. Not just read about it, but actually see in motion, and to experience it almost firsthand. We saw Elvis gyrate and the Beatles wanna hold your hand, we saw Kennedy out talk Nixon, and we saw man land on the Moon.

But with these great things came the ability to see with our own eyes the effects of war, the dishonesty of politicians, and a constant barrage of reports of local murders and fires and robberies. A lot of our naiveté was stripped from us in one generation. Things that adults used to discuss in the living room after the kids were asleep were on Prime Time, being forced down our throats. Advertisers promised the kids wondrous things which would make them the envy of the neighborhood, which turned out to be cheaply made plastic that cracked the first day. Viet Nam was pumped straight into the living room. Watergate was everywhere you turned.

The innocence that my parents knew as children was already a thing of the past by the time I was born. The Boomers were the last generation to try to cling to idealism, to try to maintain a shred of beauty in what was revealed to be a cold and ugly world. They went to Woodstock, they hung out in San Francisco and thought they could change the world with love, they lived in communes and tried to get back in touch with Nature. Whether they realized it or not, they were trying to regain the innocence. Ask an aging Boomer about Nixon and they’ll stop just short of telling you he had horns and a tail. Why? Because he was just another piece of the process of hardening them. The President is supposed to be an honorable man, the greatest man in the nation, not just another human being who’s prone to corruption like the rest of us. That’s what they really hold against him- that he was just another thrust in the gang rape of their innocence.

The Internet has taken all of this several quantum levels higher. Now not only do you get the mainstream media telling you just how shitty the world is, but anyone with time and a little knowledge of HTML is an instant publisher. Porn that was only available in seedy little storefronts twenty years ago is now only a few keystrokes away in your living room. Stile now brings us things that I couldn’t even imagine five years ago. Accessing fairly innocuous pages brings up a pop-up advertising a tiny remote camera that you can hook up to your computer, with suggestive pictures of young women smiling at us to show us how easy voyeurism can be.

I don’t envy my kids. They’re young at a time when the world is far more cynical and harsh than ever, at a time when if an email is delayed a day it can cause massive chaos at work, when if you don’t have a cell phone and go for a walk people get angry that you were out of contact for an hour. The stress levels have jumped insanely and the societies of the world are really beginning to show it.

I know that you can’t put the djinn back in the bottle, but that doesn’t mean that we have to blindly accept and like it.
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Infested cats,

Remember this post? If i was a "head" doctor, after reading this and other posts you've made; I would proclaim you to be close to genius! (not quite insane)

Nigel

*bumb*
It did not go unnoticed Infested Cats!

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Originally posted by Justsomeguy@15 July 2003 - 15:46
Interesting... I had a very similar train of thought enter my head a year or so ago... it really was bringing me down until I got talking to an older friend about it while we up drinking bourbon into the wee hours.

You know what he said to me?

Quote:

---

Damn... you're not even 40 yet and you're having your mid-life crisis already! Way to go man!

---

You are not going crazy... you've just intellectually matured to the point where you can see the basic flaws of society. It's unsettling at first, but remember, everybody goes through it eventually. Some sooner than others.

Have fun! you've gained a whole new perspective. Used properly it can turn life's little ironies into a grand comedy. But try not to let yourself become too cynical.

Quote:

---

Have you ever heard of or read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. Check it out, it's an inquiry into values.

Hey, get some sleep eh? )

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Indeed. Both of these will help you more than anything else I could say... they are both golden.

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I completely agree with you, Justsomeguy, except for this part:

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You are not going crazy... you've just intellectually matured to the point where you can see the basic flaws of society. It's unsettling at first, but remember, everybody goes through it eventually. Some sooner than others.

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I would like to see more people going through that fase; it would make the world a better place. ;)




@ IC: You're getting smarter all the time. The fase you're going through now is difficult, but you will be greatly rewarded if you keep up. Just beware of (too much) cynicism. :)

http://old.hatethemainstream.com/cgi-bin/c...nts.cgi?view=94

http://www.hatethemainstream.com/print.php?sid=206

Can I take it you hate the mainstream.

Well well, very interesting links, JPaul.
Am I wrong, or is somebody plagiarizing? <_<

Chap didn&#39;t actually say it was his work, on the other hand he never denied it when other people assumed it was.

Can one plagiarise by omission ?

transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one&#39;s own : use (another&#39;s production) without crediting the source

I think that the second definition would suggest yes.

I have used your spelling to find the meaning btw, but stuck to mine for my post. I hope you don&#39;t mind. Both are acceptable, your&#39;s is just the more American form.