You are reading a single comment by @hippy and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
egoist, selfish, aggressive men?
Nah, I'm that and I'm well aware we're fucked. I'm also well aware what I can do amounts to fucking nothing based on what else is happening on this planet. I waste my time riding to work, sorting recycling, trying to avoid buying plastics and the whole reduce, reuse, recycle but at the end of the day, some cunt in the USA is probably just gonna lean on a button after some cunt in Korea does the same and we're all dust.
hippy
nick_h.
May I try a philosophical take? Our species has a powerful sense of self-awareness. This makes many of us search for a meaning to our lives.
But there is none. So we try to find meaning by making our mark with excess consumption and displays of power. It's a sad paradox that self-awareness, which we think of as our unique advantage, is driving us to consume excess resources and extinguish ourselves. We need to accept that our lives are trivial, inconsequential, just a molecule in a planet-sized brownian motion.
I have done this. It's quite calming but it has an unfortunate label, absurdism, which doesn't sell it that well. And to be honest I wouldn't have accepted this willingly. It's been forced on me by having ME for 30 years. I'm 62, with almost no friends and family and no money or self-determination, and I realise my life is never going to add up to anything. Anything at all. This is my enlightenment.
I wish I had come to it willingly when I was 16 and agonising about what to do with my life. Are there people here who have always known this? Maybe the zen and yoga types? Perhaps more likely to be women than the often egoist, selfish, aggressive men?
This is another way of saying that the patriarchy has doomed us. A matriarchy could save us from ourselves, but the patriarchy is in the driving seat and will not share it.