[Aw] A Cheerful Look at Cosmic Impending Doom. (Warning: Pollyesque?)

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Title uses the idea someone recently had for listing section so when we go to look for stuff later we can find it, if we can remember that....

What I enjoy of late is how many opportunities there are for individual consciousness to choose the "probability" they would like to participate in (as some physicists and Seth might put it).

Y2K can do us in. Or a solar flare can take us out. Or the water can put us under. Or nuclear meltdown and/or war can blow us up. Or WWIII can ... well you get the idea. As that infamous Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" says, it is getting really interesting lately.

Prepare for more of this, I'd guess, as the year 2000 nears. Y2K itself has a whole set of possibilities.... choose one, choose a color of that rainbow spectrum you best relate to and do your best. You'll live, or you'll die. All part of the cycle. Would have happened eventually anyway.

Mr. Toad's wild ride! What an adventure. Now that I am finally over my panic, fear, dread, tunnel vision neurotic study and intellectual preparation phase, and am into my merely obsessive physical preparation phase, I feel a whole lot better.

I don't have any clue whatever what's going to happen when the Year 2000 rolls around. All my guesses are dismal, but then no matter what my head thinks, the rest of me has a real hard time truly conceptualizing the level of event and change my hands are preparing for. So I have to "suspend disbelief," because I know that nobody's psychology can truly believe anything they haven't already experienced, and I do what seems logical and safe.

Feeling much more constructive of late, I intend to do my best to enjoy the hell out of whatever novel drama life provides. My humor gets yet blacker by the day and even the most horrible things seem pretty darn funny to me lately. And why not? THIS is life. Not what happens in the future, not what could happen, but this moment, right now.

All this cramming 10 years of information into my head in mere months -- plus two jobs and a kid and a semi-husband and massive Y2K and survival education and prep and I'm trying to eat breakfast, do a computer morse code drill and the kid is tugging on my sleeve going MOMMYMOMMYMOMMYMOMMY! (forever, as 2.5 year olds do!) --

-- and just today it occurred to me that this ought to be the time of my life. Every day ought to be the time of my life. But especially this year, this intense introduction to new subjects, new people, and a new way of looking at the world. I've been reading this board since around, I think it was July of last year, though I didn't post. There are people on this board who simply through their writing I would welcome in my home as a friend-waiting-to-happen. That's a good thing. Survival planning doesn't have to be all gloomy.

(My beat-the-gloom method for not letting the media/gov't inanity depress me: DON'T LOOK, PJ! My beat-the-gloom method for not letting the concept of what could happen to me or around me depress me: DON'T THINK ABOUT IT PJ! This works much better. Y'all should try it sometime.)

So I guess you could call me a Polly. I believe that life is experience, life is adventure, life is novelty, and darn if Y2K doesn't provide a simply marvelous opportunity for all of the above. (So do war and other cheerful subjects, of course. It's really all in how you look at it. You could die tomorrow, nobody is ever *really* in control, and we may as well live while we can!)

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 14, 1999

Answers

The only source of knowledge is experience.
-- Albert Einstein The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
-- Albert Einstein The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
-- Albert Einstein The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
-- Albert Einstein. The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.
-- Max Planck

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 14, 1999.

pretty good story. Reminds me of PNG's "the glass will break" Buddism post except a lot funnier.

Here's a few more one liners from Uncle Albert:

Time and Space are modes by which we think, not conditions in which we live.

The distinction between past and future is but an illusion, if only a stubborn one.

Herr Gott verfelt nicht (God does not play dice)

-- a (a@a.a), April 14, 1999.


You are certainly correct...he does not play dice...he does, however plan..and is keenly watching events..and will soon play the swan song. Einstein saw order, beauty, and wonder in the creation he was observing..and was keenly a believer in the most High. We can be sure that the Creator will soon intervene! The world cannot tolerate much more...

-- rick shade (Rickoshade@aol.com), April 14, 1999.

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." (Voltaire)

"We are far more imprisoned by cultural conventions than we are by physical laws." (Terence McKenna)

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), April 15, 1999.


"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." A. Einstein

More generally, people have little specific knowledge of what is happening around them. An academic study that appeared right before the presidential election reports that less than 30 percent of the population was aware of the positions of the candidates on major issues, though 86 percent knew the name of George Bush's dog. The general thrust of propaganda gets through, however. When asked to identify the largest element of the federal budget, less than 1/4 give the correct answer: military spending. Almost half select foreign aid, which barely exists; the second choice is welfare, chosen by 1/3 of the population, who also far overestimate the proportion that goes to Blacks and to child support. And though the question was not asked, virtually none are likely to be aware that `defense spending' is in large measure welfare for the rich. Another result of the study is that more educated sectors are more ignorant-- not surprising, since they are the main targets of indoctrination. Bush supporters, who are the best educated, scored lowest overall. --Noam Chomsky

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --George Bernard Shaw

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change. --Dan Quayle

-- R. Wright (blaklodg@aol.com), April 15, 1999.



"It's what you don't know that's dangerous. It's what you don't know that'll kill you". (Heinlein? - I've forgetten the author and the character)

This is why cats are curious and why humans no longer live in caves. Unfortunately, a large fraction of humanity no longer seems to know this. Perhaps it was always so.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), April 15, 1999.


PJ

We share the same optimism-in-the-face-of-the-unknown. Remember, no matter who we are, our mortal life is temporary. Whatever 2000 brings, so be it. I'll still enjoy sunrise/sunset, the smell of the seasons and the pleasures and surprises of each day. I sense that you will be fine.

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), April 15, 1999.


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