Is comfortable living introducing a violent malaise in people?

[Malikon]

Seems like when humans had to really struggle to survive. Hunt food, grow food, build a town,...whatever. We were too busy trying not to die to really be bored and restless.

I almost wonder if humanity (at least the more advanced countries) isn't undergoing some kind of mass psychotic break.

People are bored and restless. Life is unfulfilling for many. The mass produced food is preservative laden poison. People are constantly introducing more and more 'time saving' gadgets into their lives,....which eats up more time,..so they multi-task and get more stressed out.

People nowadays can't seem to sit still for more then 10 seconds.


I just wonder if a lot of the violence and insane behavior is just a result of all this technology, mixed with boredom, and with too much free time to sit around bemoaning your fate. Instead of having to be working to stay alive.

Then you get all the people who are basically being raised by the state on welfare, generation after generation.

What do they do with their time? They're not working.

So they sit around, get restless, decide their sh*t life is someone else's fault,...and somewhere along the way they start shooting people. Or selling/doing drugs.


Idk.


I think if people really had to struggle to keep their fool asses alive,..maybe things wouldn't be the way they are now?

Add to that a society that kind of,....forces you to be a certain way. You can't just bow out and say you're gonna go, "live off the land."

"You got a permit for that deer you just killed with your homemade bow and arrow? No permit? Off to jail. Because the state owns the wildlife, and the plants, and the land."

Life is weird, and you can't get away from it.

I think people have a deep seated restlessness these days that's starting to rear it's head in violent, sociopathic ways.


...just a theory though.

Apparently boredom is a luxury.

[NeoConMan]

Get a job, work your ass off.
(And I don't mean at a computer keyboard or a retail kiosk at the mall.)

You'll be too tired to cause any trouble.
Come home beat, grab some chow, and hit the sack, start again way before sun-up.

Funny how all those stories of morality (from the Bible or elsewhere - including yer Granpappy) were right...


Worked for me anyway.
Working 80 hours a week as a rigger doing crane work cured me of my desire to cat around all night.
My addiction became overtime hours, because the money provided the tools for everything I desired.

.

[Malikon]

(as an aside,.....it took me a second to see you'd said "Rigger",...at first I was )

sorry,...carry on

[NeoConMan]

Eh, no problem.

I agree with your OP though.

The disagreement will be over when the human animal first identified such a phenomenon among his neighbors...

.

[Borntooslow]

There is a part of my soul, that would like nothing more than to 'live off the land', and drop out of modern society. (If it were possible to do so)

But there is also the fear, and obviously a comfort that you would be giving up.

I guess i really just wish we could rewind the clocks a few decades or something. I dont know. But i share a lot of your sentiment.

We pay for water now. We pay for water. What the hell happened to us? All of these wonderful distractions that most of us cant live without anymore, or so we think, have kept our eyes off the ball, and allowed the corporate takeover of America and the world to become dug in, completely embedded with no reverse course available without Big Pain for everyone. Well, almost everyone.

I have to admit, the future feels a bit bleak in that sense. More of the same coming, harder, faster, deeper entrenched.

[DRF]

Theres a whole segment of the population that think they are 50 Cent or whoever and a world class UFC street champ,raised on video games,thug life,crappy parenting/parent,entitlement. Too many people and too many crappy cultures crammed into a crappy media driven society.

[NeoConMan]

Originally Posted by Borntooslow

There is a part of my soul, that would like nothing more than to 'live off the land', and drop out of modern society.
(If it were possible to do so)

It is - just be prepared for the scorn of the "enlightened ones" around you.

Originally Posted by Borntooslow

I guess i really just wish we could rewind the clocks a few decades or something.

Five decades would work for me.

Originally Posted by Borntooslow

We pay for water now. We pay for water. What the hell happened to us?

NO SH!T!

Originally Posted by Borntooslow

... allowed the corporate takeover of America...

I'll see your corporate takeover, and raise you one wholesale abandonment of morals, values and ethics in the home.
That's where it all begins...

Originally Posted by Borntooslow

I have to admit, the future feels a bit bleak in that sense.
More of the same coming, harder, faster, deeper entrenched.

I agree.

No matter the cause, it's real and it ain't getting any better.
(And I have four kids between 13 and 23...)

.

[River]

Thought-provoking, but nah.

A little ancient history reading leads me to believe we're much less violent now. Those of us living the cush-life, that is.

[Malikon]

No,...I mean,..I'll concede to that fact. I'm not entirely ignorant of human history.

But in a lot of ways people have it so easy now in comparison I have to wonder just what is triggering people to act so nucking futz!?

DRF made some valid observations I hadn't really considered till he kind of,..bluntly threw it out there.

We're at a point where modern society should be an amazing thing,...and it's kind of horrible. Why?

Education or lack of?

Sh*tty parenting?

No true repercussions for your actions?

I'm just,....you know I read the news and I just gotta say, "Why?"

Cause and effect?

I see the effect, so what's the damn cause?

[NeoConMan]

Those of us NOT living the cush-life are the problem, now as it ever was, eh?

Of course, the cush-life used to mean sufficient food, clean water, and reliable shelter.
Once you had acquired it, you would strive to maintain it.

Now the cush-life is taxpayer-funded social programs.
Fxck it up, and they'll keep handing you more - because you DESERVE it...

.

[Malikon]

*sniff*

I want the Kush life.

oh wait,...different kind of cush.

[River]

Originally Posted by Malikon

No,...I mean,..I'll concede to that fact. I'm not entirely ignorant of human history.

I know you're not.

But I really think the change is in the level of collective introspection in which you're indulging [us]. Starving family living hand-to-mouth will kill you and eat you.

Always been nucking futz, always will be. It's the megalomaniacal ones who really scare me. And they've been with us since that Chimp in 2001 - A Space Odyssey saw that big black Lego block.

[MineGoesTo11]

The diminishing returns of technology. Or perhaps technology has evolved faster than our ability to comport ourselves according to the etiquette that sufficed in the early 20th century.

The Machine Stops - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[NeoConMan]

Originally Posted by River

And they've been with us since that Chimp in 2001 - A Space Odessy saw that big black Lego block.

Oh, come on!!!!

Don't start the Bush/Gore/stolen election... uh..... nevermind.

.

[brokentoeswalker]

I've often wondered about simlilar things to which you have addressed, how mankind spent eons before it really got off the ground and evolved from being wild to being domesticated and how even today we see that people are still capable of being primitive/tribal at one end of the spectrum and also still reach to new heights of great acheivement at the other end. We are extreme animals, capable of the best and the worst things possible. Our greatest strengths are also our biggest weaknesses. In some ways we are both the smartest and most idiotic animal on the planet. Fascinating ponderings really.

[Daniel]

You may be onto something here Scooter...

[Malikon]

Originally Posted by MineGoesTo11

The diminishing returns of technology. Or perhaps technology has evolved faster than our ability to comport ourselves according to the etiquette that sufficed in the early 20th century.

The Machine Stops - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Never heard of that book, but after reading the Wiki page it sounds really cool.

Thanks.

[KSG_Standard]

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to selfishness;
6. from selfishness to complacency;
7. from complacency to apathy;
8. from apathy to dependence;
9. from dependency back again into bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian



Just sayin'

[MineGoesTo11]

Every civilization that has risen or fallen on this rock, at some point in its history, has probably congratulated itself at a job well done at reaching the pinnacle of humanity. Then times get tough, add a few decades or centuries of decline and war, lose a few hundred years of collective knowledge in the collapse and start again. It's a game of snakes and ladders really.

[MineGoesTo11]

Originally Posted by Malikon

Never heard of that book, but after reading the Wiki page it sounds really cool.

Thanks.

I had me a feeling it would speak to your sensibilities

[Thumpalumpacus]

Civilization is just a veneer. The animal nature of every human is close to the surface -- some closer than others, but we all have the capacity for brutality.

One of the quotes I keep close is from the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

[Malikon]

No wonder I get lonely.

While I'm trying to force my own evolution into the Übermensch, others embrace their monkey side.

Awesome.

No wonder I look at the world and weep.

[MineGoesTo11]

Originally Posted by Malikon

No wonder I get lonely.

While I'm trying to force my own evolution into the Übermensch, others embrace their monkey side.

Awesome.

No wonder I look at the world and weep.

Oh, come have a banana you big ape.

[bscenefilms]

Art is a product of leisure time provided by the civilization of mankind. Go back to spending 100% of your time trying to survive and there is no music...

[Malikon]

true,....very true.

I haven't done sh*t today because I didn't have to, and am currently debating doing a couple shots and spending the night goofing off on MLP while I play with my git-fiddle.

So I guess I appreciate the luxury of free time. I just wish others could use theirs in ways that didn't involve killing or hurting others.

[brokentoeswalker]

Originally Posted by Malikon

No wonder I get lonely.

While I'm trying to force my own evolution into the Übermensch, others embrace their monkey side.

Awesome.

No wonder I look at the world and weep.

The Kinks - Apeman 1970 - YouTube

The Kinks - Apeman 1970 - YouTube

[Malikon]

If women wouldn't b*tch about living in a cave, perhaps society would not have evolved as it has.

I almost wonder if the quest for Vagina shaped the world?

Most guys I know that work really, really hard to afford a house and "stuff", ... do it for their wives/girlfriends.

A lot of the single guys I know,...work only as much as they have to to pay bills and stay alive.

[River]

Originally Posted by Malikon

I almost wonder if the quest for Vagina shaped the world?

Duh.

[River]

To put it a bit less crudely, Malk, watch what wildlife you can - from the little things so small you can barely see them to the giant creatures of the forest. They're driven to procreate. The females decide which males get to. Therefore, the males do what the females want them to.

They may do it furtively and deny it to their buds, but they do it.

[sonar1]

Originally Posted by Malikon

...wonder if the quest for Vagina shaped the world?...

I had a girl friend tell me once she had to go see her "gyroscope doctor."

"Gyroscope?" Says I.

"Gynecologist. Y'know: makes the world go round..."