Anxiety.

luka

Well-known member
The Return of The Great God Pan.

The music characteristic of the age of anxiety isn't anxious music it's anti anxiety medication music.

It does concern me that all our canaries in the coal mine are drugged to the eyeballs and oblivious to the gas.

The dam of repression is certain to burst sooner or later and give way to mass hysteria, terror and the return of The Great God Pan.

This whole mini era is defined by a state of denial.

Do you suffer from anxiety? What is it like? What are the effects? What do you do to mitigate them?
 

luka

Well-known member
the '80s were the last time we were menaced by an immediate state of existential fear. The last time the extinction of the species felt like a distinct and ever present possibility.

It's fear which has returned to the world.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
the '80s were the last time we were menaced by an immediate state of existential fear. The last time the extinction of the species felt like a distinct and ever present possibility.

It's fear which has returned to the world.

This is the overwhelming lurking anxiety, but we're also being provoked into anxiety by technology. Sure, it coddles us - but it also runs on anxiety. The anxiety that you're not popular enough, or rich enough, or whatever enough.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"The music characteristic of the age of anxiety isn't anxious music it's anti anxiety medication music."

In general yes, but I was unaware of Billie Eilish's music until a couple of days ago, and what stands out is how downbeat and anxious it is compared to megastars of the immediately previous era. I'm not sure it's any good, but that doesn't really matter. It seems like a definite change, and I can imagine it soundtracking a paranoid comedown quite adequately.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Kids can now be bullied outside of school.

Also I just think we're all wildly overstimulated.

No coincidence that there are now so many adverts for mattresses. Meditation apps. Etc.

But no doubt the climate change thing helps drive people into their devices.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
About 10 years ago there was a bit of research that suggested white people would be a minority in America by 2030 or something. It was something that got bought up a lot when mitt Romney lost; there was even talk of it being an existential threat to the Republican Party and they needed to start courting minority voters and all that. Bill ireilly declared America isn’t the America we all once knew.

I think that’s had a huge psychological impact on white Americans. Frightened the life out of them. Hence trump. Hence the alt right.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"Public perceptions about crime in the U.S. often don’t align with the data. Opinion surveys regularly find that Americans believe crime is up nationally, even when the data shows it is down. In 18 of 22 Gallup surveys conducted between 1993 and 2018, at least six-in-ten Americans said there was more crime in the U.S. compared with the year before, despite the generally downward trend in national violent and property crime rates during most of that period."

An anxious population is easily cowed and easily marketed to.
 

Leo

Well-known member
It all makes me pine for the days when anxiety was based around the arms race, nuclear proliferation and mutually assured destruction. How quaint.
 

version

Well-known member
One of my experiences of anxiety is putting greater emphasis on small, easily dealt with things until they balloon into a colossal web of tics and rituals and become just as stressful as the big things.
 

version

Well-known member
"Public perceptions about crime in the U.S. often don’t align with the data. Opinion surveys regularly find that Americans believe crime is up nationally, even when the data shows it is down. In 18 of 22 Gallup surveys conducted between 1993 and 2018, at least six-in-ten Americans said there was more crime in the U.S. compared with the year before, despite the generally downward trend in national violent and property crime rates during most of that period."

An anxious population is easily cowed and easily marketed to.

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
with an ageing population, you're actually getting a higher proportion of the population preoccupied with impending death than a younger population.
 

luka

Well-known member
That might be true but the anxiety epidemic seems to be hitting the young disproportionately
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
these are all abstract anxieties though aren't they? i always assumed some of the people on here experienced anxiety on a more personal level? being in crowded places, stuff like that?
 

luka

Well-known member
I thought the point about anxiety was it didn't have a specific limited cause? I know you can have various phobias but that is localised, different
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
for me it's not always entirely clear what people mean with anxiety. fear of losing your job or fear of a pandemic or the climate crisis are kinda different though aren't they?
 

luka

Well-known member
Well, I'm suggesting that the anxiety epidemic is caused primarily by the shadow the future is casting over us, the end of the world. Real or imagined.

It's not a medical opinion. Doctors wouldn't endorse it.
 
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luka

Well-known member
I'm saying that the only reason the world is able to carry on is that it has drugged itself to the eyeballs. Without that Panic would ensue. I'm saying this state of denial can only be temporary. Sooner or later the dam will burst.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm saying for a huge huge number of people modern life is tolerable and manageable only if permanently drugged.
 
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