caught in a vicious circle

[raveness1]

The other day I wrote on a different forum concerning matters of spirituality
and psychology rather than the current affairs, but I'm also curious what
people here, in Poland, think about it.
Below is an exctract from it, I don't want to sermonize...anyway nobody likes
it.

" Most of the texts in the modern songs are about love, friendship,
loneliness, longing for affection...etc.
People sing (and also dream) about lack of simple smiles, complain of being
lonely, cry out for human feelings...but well in reality they do little or
nothing to accomplish it. More, they don't even try.

Let's take, for example, a common daily behaviour in a subway/metro. Everyone
is sitting or standing silent, gazing out of a window or at the floor,
impassive, indifferent to the surroundings. Some of the travellers have
headphones on their ears and are listening some songs about this insane human
interactions (or rather lack of them), but they do still nothing. And they
wonder why the world is so cruel, cold, feelingless.

Well, the world is as one wishes... The vicious circle made to one's order. "

[usenetposts]

It's a well observed point.

I don't expect people who travel with headphones in their ears to be the force
of social change in our modern world, anyway. They are too busy sucking away at
their melodious opiate.

[raveness1]

To some degree you're right. But I myself have experienced this sort of feeling
being far away from home...on the other continent. Well, the music kept me
going, anyway you slice it. It was a strange, uncommon perception of the world
so different from ours.

[ianek70]

raveness1 napisał:

> " Most of the texts in the modern songs are about love, friendship,
> loneliness, longing for affection...etc.
> People sing (and also dream) about lack of simple smiles, complain of being
> lonely, cry out for human feelings...but well in reality they do little or
> nothing to accomplish it. More, they don't even try.

Pop music is not about real feelings, it's about money. Commercial music means
nothing.
On the other hand, if modern western civilisation causes alienation, people
will exploit the alienated people by singing about loneliness. "Ooooh, baby, my
manager pays me to understand yooooouuuu."

> Let's take, for example, a common daily behaviour in a subway/metro. Everyone
> is sitting or standing silent, gazing out of a window or at the floor,
> impassive, indifferent to the surroundings. Some of the travellers have
> headphones on their ears and are listening some songs about this insane human
> interactions (or rather lack of them), but they do still nothing. And they
> wonder why the world is so cruel, cold, feelingless.

Excessive direct eye-contact is considered aggressive in most cultures.
You can look at the floor (neutral behaviour) or you can stare at someone. I'm
an adult male, so if I stare at people for long enough I might frighten
someone, I might get punched, or some mad woman might say "Hi, handsome, I like
psychopaths. Grrr." These are not good things.
If you're 17, female and pretty and you stare at people for long enough, you'll
also get a reaction, but it probably won't be someone shaking your hand and
saying "Good afternoon, I admire your stare." And if it is, this is still bad.
People travelling to work in the morning or home in the evening are generally
tired or stressed. They're not thinking "Why is the world so cold?", they're
thinking "I'm hungry", "My boss is a knob-end", "Did I brush my hair?", "Two
weeks until pay-day", "Worst hangover for weeks", "I miss my children". They're
not unfriendly and don't consider strangers unfriendly.
Most people who are travelling by bus or underground are going somewhere, to
them public transport is a means of, well, transport and not a place to start a
conversation with strangers who are also going somewhere and thinking similar
thoughts.
There are plenty of places to start a conversation with strangers. At a
concert, in a museum or at the bookmaker's people have shared interests, pubs
and clubs are designed for social interaction.
There are divisions between what is public and what is private (the divisions
vary within cultures). In some cities you can't start a conversation with
strangers in the street, in others you can, but in most of Europe you don't
make friends on buses.

> Well, the world is as one wishes... The vicious circle made to one's order. "

The world is how you find it. Norms change slowly, but you can always adapt to
them or learn how to use them.

[raveness1]

That's the way it is, as you say. But yet still it is not easy to me to conform
to this isolated, cold world. But what choice do I have or you? We're mere a
part of an intricated mechanism, we just don't have any influence into the
progress of life.
Or maybe we do, who knows, slowly, step by step...?

[kylie1]

I think I can really see your point, raveness. The world has become a very
unfriendly place. The way we used to live in harmony with nature and each other
has been totally lost. People nowadays tend to display more selfish and
irresponsible behaviors than say 50 years ago. These, I believe, will lead us
sooner or later to greater peril. Many of my relatives here reminisce with pride
about the days when people seemed to bond better and form stronger, friendlier
communities. I witnessed people passing by in their cars next to a body of an
older man who happened to collapse on the street. A callous indifference to
suffering...things you see time and again. Ten cars, perhaps even more, went by
before someone finally took notice and decided to call for help. Kids are told
not to talk to strangers for fear of being abducted, sexually exploited, killed
or what have you. Eventhough childhood is about innocence, we are teaching our
kids that our world out there is evil. When these young people grow up, they
will already exhibit an attitude of mistrust and a lack of empathy for others.
How is that for building a friendly society? Unfortunately, it is a refelection
of the cold and unfeeling world we live in.

[raveness1]

That's true. But we can change it. Everyone of us, because it's up to us. The
problem is that people don't want to change it. It's so blissful to mere exist
and worry about nothing... Well, the human race is gonna to collapse truely.
Let's see.

[babiana]

kylie1 napisała:

> I think I can really see your point, raveness. The world has become a very
> unfriendly place. The way we used to live in harmony with nature and each other
> has been totally lost. People nowadays tend to display more selfish and
> irresponsible behaviors than say 50 years ago.

Animals are part of nature. Human beings became so selfish and cruel towards
them. Dog's vocal chords are cut in order to keep them quiet. Cats' claws
removed to save our furniture. In some cities crazy councilors are thinking
about forcing owners to walk their cats on a leash or force owners to keep them
inside of homes. Only human beings have their rights? We think that we are
masters of this planet. Tigers, rhinos, elephants are killed with no mercy.
Where do we go? Can we escape this vicious circle?

Forced to be nice vs. Free to be yourself

[ianek70]

raveness1 napisał:

> That's the way it is, as you say. But yet still it is not easy to me to
conform
>
> to this isolated, cold world.

The world is no worse than it used to be, it's just different.
People are generally more free to be individuals than in the past, they are not
forced to conform.

Look at films or photographs of people from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s. They're
all dressed identically. Pictures of lynchings in southern states of the US
show happy, smiling families, all with the same hats and skin colour. The
people hanging from the trees didn't fit in and died. The Holocaust could never
happen in today's Europe, because then they were slaughtering a mass of people
who were different from them, but now we see it as the murder of millions of
individual human beings. The destruction of Dresden or Nagasaki would be
unacceptable to most people nowadays (even allowing for the brutalising effects
of war), but most of our grandparents thought of it as revenge by our tribe
against their tribe.

Fifty years ago, people were under more pressure to conform. One advantage of
this is that people pretended to be nice to folk they hated.
The main disadvantage was that anyone who was different was persecuted.
Left-handed people were forced to write with their right hands, which caused
various nervous problems such as stuttering, boys who fancied boys instead of
girls were sent to prison, women who had sex before marriage were sent to
mental hospitals. In Poland you could be persecuted for having rich parents, in
Scotland kids with Catholic parents hated kids with Protestant parents. When I
was small, we were told not to talk to strangers because they might not be
nice. My grandparents weren't told this, because people then just shut their
eyes and pretended everyone was nice.

Now people are free to be themselves. They can think what they want, wear what
they want, sleep with who they want, worship what they want.
And they can be nice when they want - for some that's never, for some it's only
at Christmas, for some it's all the time (except when they're stressed or
tired).

[raveness1]

ianek70 napisał:

>
> Now people are free to be themselves. They can think what they want, wear
what
> they want, sleep with who they want, worship what they want.
> And they can be nice when they want - for some that's never, for some it's
only
>
> at Christmas, for some it's all the time (except when they're stressed or
> tired).

Yea, I like this last sentence.
Some people could be nice once in a blue moon,but it's hardly probable. Yet,
mind, I can smell a little progress in our humanity path: when you say that
some of us humans can be nice even once a year - at Christmas time...well
better that than nothing.

[babiana]

Social Isolation
by Shoma Mittra


We live today in a society surrounded by family, friends and work place
colleagues. There is hardly ever a moment when we are not bounded by some form
of human interaction and yet we are all essentially alone...


Community parks

College dorms

Crowded cities

Distant forms



A world of people

Social isolation

Individual autism

Detached retrogression



Brooding thoughts

Solitary imprisonment

Like captive birds

Seeking freedom



Instant gratification

Phone call and e- mails

An isochronous existence

In a world of instant messages





But rapidly headed towards

An ailment without a cure

Life in solitary co existence

Shrouded in hope

[usenetposts]

It was an interesting poem, but in a sense people have more community now than
there has ever been, only it is electricised into the internet.

If you look at this set of fora, with its millions of participants and posts -
this shows how much human interaction there is. Each of us is writing to and
reading from hundreds of people more than we did in the age of stamps and
letters.

But then, it is rare that we ever re-read a mail or post that is more than a
couple of weeks old. They never get found again in the bottom of boxes and make
us smile again. They do not come in fancy paper or perfumed with scent, and
everybody has the same handwriting.

And when it actually comes to seeing, face to face, the people that we talk to
so much on the net, well, we all know what a problem that can be to arrange.
But presumably that means we are satisfied enough with this kind of contact, we
don't even really need to consummate it most of the time with an actual face-to-
facer. After all, we get enough face contact with people at work, so actually
MEETING people that you correspond with on the net - that's a bit too much like
work, and certainly harder work than simply writing some paragraphs when that
is what we have all got used to doing.

They write themselves, almost, basically.

[babiana]

Indeed we have many "virtual friends". This kind of contacts are interesting and
satisfying as long as we are well. But when (God forbids) a disease strikes us
one day we'll need real friends, who will visit us in a hospital, will talk to
us on the phone, who will help us to do our groceries etc. Virtual relationship
will never replace a personal contact with our friends.
And when we are young and healthy we don't realize the value and importance of
a real friendship.
Globalization is also the culprit in parents’ isolation. Children move all over
the world following an interesting career path. Parents are left all alone and
on an everyday basis can count only on contacts with their friends. Internet is
only an ersatz of a friendship.

[usenetposts]

If we want friends to do these things for us, then of course it helps if we
have been willing to do them for others. There is a proverb of Solomon which
says "He that would have friends must show himself friendly". I think it's not
for nothing that we talk about the wisdom of Solomon.