UKC

Just stating that I occasionally do reflect on posting mundane thoughts here to this site when there's such horrendous shit going off in the world.

Don't despair. Do your best. Be a decent person.

And clean your f-ucking teeth.

I like to tell myself that there were just as many bad things happening all through history but due to lack of media most folks just didn't know about the level of shit going on. So it just seems worse than in the past. 

This might not be true, but I find it easier to deal with the chaos if I think it's no worse than it ever was, so I will keep telling myself this.

I do wonder whether it's more visible to everyone due to the Internet. 

Humans have always been cuts to each other, sad but true unfortunately. 

And now we're destroying the planet, and we know we're doing it!

Happy days!

Hey, if it's any consolation, one can think of the arrow of time as more like a groove on a record. Whether it's branching (indeterminism) or follows a "straight" (well, curved) line (determinism), our perception of it is still limited to a single moment the needle reads (more like fuzzy half a second later, or whatever). But the record is still there, whole.

But that does not mean that the past, good moments didn't exist. And even if we all collectively end up with a whimper, there is still the Mona Lisa, your first kiss, that evening gazing up at the stars, all there. Just back in the past. Those moments existed. Yes, many horrendous moments in our collective history existed as well, but the good ones too.

And given how life might be quite common in the insanely huge universe, as its basic chemical elements are everywhere (even if the distances and timescales from the limitations imposed by the speed of light would most likely preclude any communication with any other alien species that might have reached sentience at the very narrow window as us), I find it some consolation that sometime, somewhere, someone or something other might be asking the similar questions as us, and perhaps answering them a bit better...

Also, have a 🫂and pet a 🐈!

Have you considered the benefits of more frequent mastubation?

Releases endorphins, so you'll feel better for it.

T.

A barage of heart-warming replies already! It's what makes ukc so "sticky" - in a good way! Yet again recalibrating my moral compass for the better.

It's industrialised persecution that gets under my skin. Think Gaza. Ukraine. N Korea.

Easy to reflect from a position of supreme comfort - by comparison. It isn't virtue signalling though, it genuinely pisses me off.

We aren't destroying the planet, just lots of flora and fauna, and our place in the ecosystem. When we're gone the planet will still be here, and life will carry on without a passing care for us.

Just watch a few episodes of old Top of the Pops on BBC 4 to get some perspective. You're watching the world as it was in decades past. Any thoughts that the world is going down the toilet will be dispelled. That rosy view of the past can't survive the onslaught of (largely) crap music, appalling hairstyles and clothes. Be glad flares and the Bay City Rollers are no more.

It's kept us going through a long voyage Cap'n, arrrgh!

Pull the other one, Al.

The world would still be a shit-hole and what's worse; I'd be a wanker. 

Terrible advice. 

Consider;

You have access to a wide range of healthy food, hot water on demand, healthcare (even if it carries a cost), knowledge and education of the world and beyond, safe travel across wide areas of the planet, unless you've served you have likely lived a life free from serving in a war, you have legal rights which protect you, your family and property.

You live better than virtually every other generation before you, and in many areas better than kings of old.

I share your despair for the future but as others have said at least we're aware of the issues and maybe, just maybe we'll do something about it.

Get someone else to do it for you, then only 50% of your statement would be true.

After all, evolution comes on in leaps and bounds after a mass extinction event. Without a liturgy of them in the past the highest form of life would probably be some little lizardy thing.

There's two books that strongly advocate that point of view - 'Factfulness' by Hans Rosling, and 'Better Angels of our Nature' by Pinker. I loved that book when it first came out - and still do - but it hasn't aged well in the era of Putin, Trump et al...

Keep going with posting those mundane thoughts. It's a good distraction for us as well as you.

For the sake of keeping my own mental health from deteriorating I'm having to distance myself from what's going on in the world (which none of us can do anything about anyway), and concentrate instead on stuff local to me.

The wasted hours spent on doomscrolling world news is almost like a self-harming addiction, and I personally have found it difficult to stop myself from doing it. 

I'm slowly coming to realise though, that contact with the tangible and immediate is much healthier than what is virtual, remote and untouchable. I can have some degree of control over the former, but none whatsoever over the latter.

There’s always been horrendous shit going on.

For the most part it’s a lot less horrendous now than it was just 100 years ago.

For the most part, nothing you can do about it. Try do the best in your corner of the world and that’s the best you can do.

I dunno - as often as not I can't help feel it's overrated

Setting up neatly for the old line...

"Hey, don't knock mssturbation... It's sex with someone I love."