We Are All Willing On The Catastrophe

droid

droid

Well-known member
Well, Ive been questioning the universality since day one.

Always behind JE of course, but I couldnt be arsed navigating Vims sophomoric nocturnal cogitations. Ive put enough blood into this monstrosity of a thread and Ive got a thesis to finish.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
Amazing that you can tell exactly when Barty visits the forum due to the quantity and snideness of the tags.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
luka said:
This is one of the things Ballard got right. We are all aware our feet have never touched the ground. We are desperate for disaster. We are hungry for The Real. We are not content with global warming, we have to accelerate it. There is no way out of this logiv. We all know our secret desires. We want to turn the world upside down. The protagonist in any Ballard novel only comes alive once the worst has happened. We want it. We need it. The vultures waiting on the street lights and telephone wires.
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To return to the OP I think this also misses out some critical elements:

1. There is still a staggeringly immense amount of heads in the sand going on. Willing on the catastrophe at least recognises that it is happening. So I am not sure who is the "we" here.

2. People don't watch horror films because they truly desire to personally experience horror. They watch them because they want the drama and adrenaline in a safe environment.

3. That said, a lot of what vim and Luka have mentioned on this thread is true. There is nihilism, there is a drive towards destruction, there is desire to alleviate the boredom and frustration via an imagined (horror film) crisis.

4. And to that I would add that there is also the ideological justification angle - greens want to be proved right, evangelicals want the rapture, nerds want to be the heroic Mad Max figure in a post apocalyptic landscape. Anarcho-communist want the crisis that leads to the revolution that leads to utopia.

But all of these are just ingredients in the stew - there are other factors too and I think the reaction on here is down to the polemical way that the issue has been framed by the OP.

Clearly not everyone is solely focussed on burning the world down. (But yes I would love to turn the world upside down).

The problem is precisely that we don't "all know our secret desires".
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
john eden said:
To return to the OP I think this also misses out some critical elements:

1. There is still a staggeringly immense amount of heads in the sand going on. Willing on the catastrophe at least recognises that it is happening. So I am not sure who is the "we" here.

2. People don't watch horror films because they truly desire to personally experience horror. They watch them because they want the drama and adrenaline in a safe environment.

3. That said, a lot of what vim and Luka have mentioned on this thread is true. There is nihilism, there is a drive towards destruction, there is desire to alleviate the boredom and frustration via an imagined (horror film) crisis.

4. And to that I would add that there is also the ideological justification angle - greens want to be proved right, evangelicals want the rapture, nerds want to be the heroic Mad Max figure in a post apocalyptic landscape. Anarcho-communist want the crisis that leads to the revolution that leads to utopia.

But all of these are just ingredients in the stew - there are other factors too and I think the reaction on here is down to the polemical way that the issue has been framed by the OP.

Clearly not everyone is solely focussed on burning the world down. (But yes I would love to turn the world upside down).

The problem is precisely that we don't "all know our secret desires".
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Well yeah. If it had been framed as a question we might have had a less messy conversation.

A lot of this ground has been covered, though understandably you wouldn't want to dredge through the whole thread.

Id make the distinction between turning things 'upside down' and wishing for catastrophe though. May seem like a minor one but its a world of difference.

Also wrt greens 'wanting to be right', as its been brought up previously. Dunno how closely you follow things but there is a major problem in climate science and activism with depression, burnout, suicide etc. That's not ideological desire at work.

Also, they are right.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
droid said:
Well yeah. If it had been framed as a question we might have had a less messy conversation.

A lot of this ground has been covered, though understandably you wouldn't want to dredge through the whole thread.

Id make the distinction between turning things 'upside down' and wishing for catastrophe though. May seem like a minor one but its a world of difference.

Also wrt greens 'wanting to be right', as its been brought up previously. Dunno how closely you follow things but there is a major problem in climate science and activism with depression, burnout, suicide etc. That's not ideological desire at work.

Also, they are right.
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I've skimmed the thread but apologies for missing out on the nuance...

I think Luka gets the distinction between catastrophe and turning the world upside down / carnival / the arsey versey etc. But yes, not the same at all.

Also I suspect we wouldn't be up to nearly 30 pages if it had been a simple neutral question so you can't argue with the lad's invocationary powers to keep the ball rolling.

Greens wanting to be right - I just remember them being mocked by my parents as being smelly hippies for believing that aerosol deodorants were causing a hole in the ozone layer. So yes they are right but it's been a lot of energy for some and as you know we have a long way to go.

That doesn't surprise me about burnout - and that gets exactly to what I was saying in my first post on this thread - there are a bunch of factors at play here, which doesn't mean we can't explore any of them individually but it does help if there is context, boringly.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
It's obviously droid who snidely called my thread a monstrosity snidely called vim sophomoric and snidely called Barty snide lol
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
luka said:
I don't think so at all. I think they're fantastic.
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I don't really mind them but it's a weird way of participating on the thread and I dunno why people revel in the opportunity to have a pop anonymously when it's all pseuodonyms on here anyway.
 
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