Thanks for your answers. To be honest, I’m being a bit selfish here and hoping that some of your answers may contain some useful wisdom to help answer some of -my- internal questions. But enough about that.
A little commentary and follow on -
When the safety net fails. You see this as a foregone conclusion. I don’t disagree. How long do you think we have, and what do you see as the solution? (grim humor aside)
Lies. It’s my belief that today, we, society, all of us are awash in a sea of lies. Someone once said that in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth would be a revolutionary act. It would appear he was right. I would say this has been going on for at least a century, but the truth is much longer than that. Do you yearn for truth? Do I? Where do you think it can be found?
(I do find ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’ quite amusing, though, but that’s probably not a good answer)
Regarding escape - Would you rather be poor and free, or wealthy and shackled to the machine? Will there be such a thing as freedom? Does it even exist today?
Do you think that we are living in the Matrix? But instead of a pod filled with goo, we are instead shackled to a society that is sucking our life energy out in other ways?
(hehe, sorry, couldn’t resist).
-rant follows, you don’t really need to answer this-
It’s funny, I read this thread, and your thoughts often echo mine, except with a greater sense of impending doom. Unfortunately, from my point of view as an X-er, I find myself agreeing somewhat, and I’m sorry if my questions have been leading. From my point of view …
I WANT ANSWERS
What the hell have these ()-ing morons done with our futures? And I’m not talking about the Boomers, but generations before them too. (Yes, I know, they squandered them) Is there hope? Is it too late? What can we do?
I don’t know, and I don’t expect you to have answers for all this. In the end, we will have to find our own answers, and hopefully find our own freedoms and success in the world.
Myself, while not everything has gone perfectly in my life, I find myself in a situation where I’m tired of the corporate treadmill, I have a decent bag of money, and part of me wants to just bail and head out to a shack in the woods somewhere. Until I have a heart attack and die because I didn’t budget health care, or something equally grim. But at least I’d die ‘free’. Sound like a good idea?
Hahahaha.
Or, I can stick it out like all other good worker drones, and die a couple of months after I retire. One of my bosses managed to have a heart attack and die the week before he was going to retire. Huzzah.
Is any of this BS worth it?
(Sorry, but this is my Gen X-er rant. I’m sure the millennials and Z-ers have or will have their own versions)
True story - buddy of mine works for a multi-national IT corp. Was at a meeting in Europe, discussing downsizing, outsourcing, etc. and was told by one of the honchos over there that basically, this is your future, get used to it. We’re not going to pay you Americans big bucks forever. (Essentially, you’ll either work for Indonesian bucks, or get used to not having a job.) Now, he’s still employed and making decent money, but they’re busy working him to death and sending him to Indonesia for several weeks a year to ride herd on the cheap labor. Whee.
Being on the leading edge of the X-ers, I used to think that if I was lucky, I might just make it through and have a decent life before the bad things come. Now I’m not so sure.
It’s tempting to just take a year or two off and enjoy some “pre-tirement” while the getting’s good, and I still have (some) health left in me. Problem is, my ‘career’ hinges on a clearance, and you can’t really neglect those for too long.
I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I realize now that there so much that I wasn’t told, or was out right lied to about. It stinks.
And the worst lies of all turned out to be the ones I told myself. Go figure.
Anyway, like I said, what do I know? I don’t even know the answers to my own problems, and while I could pretend to give you advice, who’s to know that I wouldn’t just be perpetuating the lies of the past.
Or maybe I’m just being cynical. Nah, never.
So, one last question, if you’ve managed to make it through this - I’m sure everyone else has given you advice, is there any advice you’d offer to myself, or any of the other geezers out there?
Wisdom isn’t just a one-way street.
:)
P.S. A funny thing. A long time people were a lot more interested in the truth than we seem to be these days. Aside from the obvious sources we could all argue about (Biblical, for example), Thucydides was a rather interesting fellow.
Maybe a few decades, couldn’t possibly tell you the solution (the fed neither, I bet)
I do yearn for truth. I think it can be found in finding out what your heart tells you (the part of you that is being spoken to by God) and in synthesizing the combined wisdom of the ages, gravitating to what appeals to you. That being said, no mortal authority can represent the truth in its entirety.
I think I’d rather be poor and free, my soul cries out when I’m shackled anywhere I don’t feel is beneficial to me or society.
Our society’s controlling elements are attempting to shackle us, along with those around us in the world, but their hold is not absolute. That’s what makes life beautiful, and our identities as Americans more meaningful. America is a product of modernism, and maybe the solution to reconciling it with tradition lies in America.
There is always hope, frend.
Ask our survivalist friends about the virtues of isolation, maybe they know
I hardly have any advice, I’d say to myself to stop doing self-defeating actions
I’m with your comments in general, except the idea that previous generations owe us. They clearly have developed a wealthy environment that we came into and have enjoyed. Yes, we need to deal with massive governmental/elite criminality and corruption, but that has probably been the challenge of the world for millennia. It is up to us to defeat that which is in front of us.