What does it mean to be "lonely"?
Does it mean people treat you like an outcast - and you are pushed a side and a lone person.
Does it mean you run away from people - because you dislike them or you’re unable to connect to them.
Does it mean you are always at the wrong place with nobody to connect?
Does it mean nobody understands you or nobody can follow your ideas, mindset or attitude?
What does it mean to be lonely and is it real?
The problem is an old one: how many "strangers" can a society digest? Especially in Europe with it’s internal open borders concept immigration is still a problem - and especially Britain - with it’s colonial history - has currently a hard time dealing with all the immigrants.
Britain has seen in recent years a huge influx of Polish workers - and the Asian communities (read mostly Pakistanis - like the London Bombers) have been exploding as well.
Still Europe is struggling to decide what to with all the African boat people and recent wave or Iraqi illegal immigrants crossing it’s many borders.
And there is still the Muslim question: many Europeans feel that it’s immigrated and homegrown Muslims don’t appreciate the humanistic, secular and democratic ideas on which Europe is built.
There is not much TV (via the Internet) which is worth watching, but "30 Days" is a great show. It is TV at it’s best: showing people other people and their way of life - so we can learn from each other and gain insights that are usually hard to achieve.
All "30 Days" episodes are built around the same mechanism: one person has to live with another group of people - with a contrary lifestyle or opinion. For example a bible thumbing guy has to live with a San Francisco gay dude or a meat munching hunter lives 30 days with a vegan family.
Most reality TV is built on "stupidity sensationalism" - which means they show the stupid sides of people and their actions and make fun of them. Jerry Springer talkshow is a typical example of this breed of television.
Morgan Spurlock and his team try to keep it real and show both sides of the argument / lifestyle. They never preach, they never portrait any side as better or superior - and they don’t use any cheap television effects to dumb it down.
I really hope there will be some day an international version of these - because it is obviously very US-centric - but nevertheless good.
More? 30 Days - Official Site and Wikipedia
What Ms Sklar clearly describes in this interview has been happening all over the industrial and advances countries: the middle class is disappearing and a new form of class system has been forming since the 1980’s.
Thank you Mr Reagan and Ms Thatcher for establishing the greedy philosophy of "free markets", "trickle down economic" and "market democracy". It simply isn’t a social way to run a society and establish a "just" economy.
Social societies are a GOOD thing. Capitalism is good, but it needs oversights and corrections to work for the benefit of all and not just a few people.
Click images for larger versions.
China currently sees a huge wave of help - private help from Chinese citizens. The government is so annoyed and hindered by that outpouring of private help that they try to discourage citizens from helping each other and hindering the "official" military help.
Well there is a practical and a philosophical reason behind this: first there is enough chaos already, so you don’t want unorganized citizens to block the damaged roads, but the second reason is, that citizens actually might find out that their power can make a difference and they don’t need a suppressive government to run their lives.
It is amazing how little physical contact of modern lifestyle has - and how it is supposed to happen only between "special people". Parents can cuddle their kids and visa versa. The same is true for lovers and couples. And you can give any old granny a hug.
For the rest of us a handshake and maybe a clap on the shoulder is the maximum of exchange - apart from a fist fight.
Even giving a friend a hug seems awkward too many people these days. We are becoming more and more mental being - with no personal physical culture apart from having sex.
Instead we pay wellness professional to touch us nicely, give us massages and caress our bodies. So it’s ok to let strangers touch us for money, while we are uncomfortable to touch our friends and see each other naked in a sauna?
Our biggest organ is the skin - and we should use it. Touching can be non-sexual, friendly and uplifting. We should use touch more often as a nonverbal form of communication and "feel" into the other person instead on just relying on mental forms of expression.
You can learn a lot about a person by touching him/her - and how he or she touches you. So open that channel and let’s touch …
Oh honey - just wait till the kids are gone - then I’ll get a divorce and party my brains out.
The possibilities of women have changed tremendously in the last 60 years.
Overall women have benefited the most from the sexual revolution and the new equality. Men lost their traditional "advantages" based on their gender - and they are less adaptable and flexible when it comes to our modern work environment and it’s "softer" requirements like team play, flexibility, communication, learning and emotional intelligence.
But women have also suffered from the new form of social fabric: they are now biggest number of single parents - responsible for raising and funding our kids.
People between 35 and 45 are the most populous group in many western countries. (Click image to pop the pyramid.)
In recent decades the good old population pyramid has basically flipped 180° - and now we have more mature and old people in western societies than we have young ones. We are becoming grey societies. (By the way: you can get population pyramids for many countries here)
So the fortysomethings are the biggest group in the population right now.
Plus the longer life expectancy, single lifestyle and overall youth cult have made the fortysomethings the new players in town: they have money, they are still horny and active. And their grown up egos are much more neurotic and hungry for self gratification.
The most active consumer group here are mature women. Many of them now are shedding their kids, because they are grown up now. So they want to "party extra hard" and make up for all the time they were dedicated mothers and wives.
Plus the modern western cities are more streamlined for the new single lifestyle - and they are the majority now. Families used to "rule" the cities - but that has changed during the 90’s. It’s now single all the way - or better "serial monogamizers" (people who hop from one fast relationship to the next one).
So our cities are a huge playground for the mature ladies.
Does this pop video make me look old?
The beauty and fashion industry has long discovered this rich and often desperate clientele: the cream for the skin at forty, the pill for the rotten brain at forty, etc.
The message here is: you are still adorable, but you need a tune up. Albeit an expensive one.
Behind all this is the ugly face of infertility. All primary "beauty" spots - red lips, beautiful hair, smooth skin, wide eyes - are signs of health and therefore fertility. A good looking women is most of all a fertile women.
Forty is the Magic Age - the last call for babies. But it is also the age of a new form of competition: you are fading out of the beauty competition - you are no longer the hottest chick in town, you already show some defects and there is fresher meat on sale.
Our society has just developed a "mature concept" for beauty and sexuality, but overall we do not appreciate the beauty and wisdom of older ladies as they are. We only have "Venus" measurement: either you are a young fertile love goddess or you are not.
Our definition what’s hot or not is still deeply ingrained in our biological code: only healthy breeding material is sexy.
Mature Bitches rule the Suburbs!
That brings us to the overall sexualization of age. Since Viagra was released the pressure was on - there was no longer an excuse for guys not too perform - so the ladies also had to joining the gray swingers club.
But the sexualization of mature women goes further: TV series like "Sex in the City" and "Desperate Housewives" are both part of the wider "MILF" syndrome (MILF = Mothers I’d like to fuck).
This is a new sex trend as well media frenzy: mature hot looking women who are oversexed and fuck anything that moves - plus the additional drama this behavior causes. Usually the before mentioned attributes are reserved for males. These MILFs know no taboos, they know no limits. They are the perfect sex partners.
So modern life restarts at 40 and a gray society needs to tell itself it’s still capable and interesting. It’s a mutual lie and effort to push the boundaries of age and dissolve old limits and taboos.
In a way it’s almost like the sexual egos of mature women are fighting against the menopause: "Look I still can get semen, I am still adorable! And with Science I am gonna kick your ass Mother Nature!"
Pregnant at 40+ and loving it!
In the past women past the magic age of 40 were left alone, because they were heading straight for their menopause and were therefore uninteresting as breeding material. Just wait a few more years and these women are great grandmother material.
But thanks to science, overall better health and life expectancy breeding for women after 40 is now pretty normal. And many young women prefer postpone babies longer and longer, so 35+ mothers are becoming the norm in western societies instead or rare exceptions.
And breeding can now be outsourced to a "working womb" if necessary. All you need to do is freeze your eggs in the right age and "seed" them if you are ready and rich enough to have your own kids.
So science has helped to beat the biological clock in some aspects and women can now have babies - apart from the very popular game of international adoption - in almost any age.
Guardian: Pregnancy among over-40s reaches ‘record high’
Let’s celebrate mature female consumerism and neurotic obsessions with the perfect wedding!
Conclusions?
In some way mature women are now doing the same what mature guys have been doing for ages: get out and have some fun with younger flesh. The TV shows are mostly about the usual "Relationship Porn" we love to watch (and stuff like Big Brother is the ultimate Social Porn anyway).
But the big picture is more complex: our aging societies are trying to cope with age and longevity. Behind all the modern media hype are serious questions: How do we live our lives NOT as passive grandmothers and grandfathers?
Most western people won’t have kids or grandkids when they cross the 40’s. There will be no families to fall back on - and often not even relationships - so we need new ways to socialize, form relationships on every level and "grow".
Why wait for death when you are just 40 - when your life expectancy is beyond 80? This is just the middle of your life Darling!
The old pensioner is gone - the next generation of "oldies" will be more demanding, self centered and active. Science will try to keep them "awake" and active much longer. And since our population pyramid is so skewed we need mature people to work longer and harder.
That is why the old cliches about mature women (and men) are under attack and are currently reformulated (even on trivial levels): It’s ok to have fun beyond 40, it’s ok to fuck beyond 40 and it’s probably necessary to have kids beyond 40.
That is why our societies needs to be open minded and explore about new "phases" in our lives: start a new life with 40 or a family. Since we all will last beyond the age of 70 or 80 it’s important to allow ourselves to have many "phases" in one life - and not being condemned to one "path" one has chosen in her or his twenties or thirties.
When you are a genius you are a genius. No matter how big or small your capabilities are - you should stand out and not try to fit in. You always can “fit in” once you are dead. Social conformity is a pest to the excellence of the human mind.
You think you are the current top dog? Remember that there always is a bigger dog out there to get you. The only way to win this game is not to indulge in it’s illusion of winners and loosers.
The title General doesn’t make you a military genius, nor does it bless you with understanding or courage.
PS: That is General Custer - who made his famous last stand at the Little Big Horn.
Prison life is NOT a cool hip-hop video …
It is no secret that prisons in many countries are literally exploding with inmates. The US has one of the biggest prison populations on this planet (almost 2,5 million). But also Russia and China have huge numbers of people incarcerated (each over 1 million).
The numbers are huge, but the real important statistic is how many people per 100.000 citizens are locked up:
USA: 738 prisoners per 100,000
China: 701 prisoners per 100,000
Russia: 611 prisoners per 100,000
UK: 148 prisoners per 100,000
Italy: 104 prisoners per 100,000
Turkey: 91 prisoners per 100,000
Sweden: 82 prisoners per 100,000
Needless to say that the numbers of the US, China and Russia are staggeringly high and perverse. One could understand that politically depressed nations like Russia and China would be on top of this sad chart - but the US?!
While we are here, let’s start a nice prison gang to support each other later.
The main problem for such huge numbers of inmates is actually not prison, but freedom. Most of these people have a hard time getting reintegrated - and when societies imprison such huge numbers of people they also lack the funds and patience to do the necessary socialization process.
It is easier and cheaper to simply throw these “criminals” into prison again when they fail - and fail they will, because neither society nor the government is willing to invest into their “freedom”.
Build prisons, lobby for tougher laws, get loads of prisoners and loads of government money!
Security is big business these days - not just since 9/11. Prisons are money printing machines and a safe investment. Since many societies rather lock away the unwanted people instead of dealing with them prisons are booming.
So there is a huge lobby for the “security industry”, but hardly a well paid and oiled lobby for prisoners. Fighting for prisoners rights and better reintegration is a hot potato nobody likes to touch. Companies who run prisons have only an interest to make money - that is why so many things including prisons shouldn’t be privatized at all.
Plus nobody really cares what happens to minor and major criminals once they are “justly” sentenced for a few months or for life. Out of sight, out of mind.
Many countries have followed the US lead and sentence repeated offenders to harsh long time sentences or even life. The “three strikes rule” locks even minor offenders up for life or most of their young lifes. There is no interest to make them productive members of society - instead they are treated like inferior genetic material that has to be stored in a special place to keep society “healthy”.
Yeah, evil people deserve to be tortured and locked away forever - even when they are just minor offenders or mentally sick.
But torture and mistreatment of prisoners is not just happening in Iraq and secret CIA prisons. It is pretty normal in most US prisons - and obviously considered almost normal in Russia and China.
Any society has to ask itself of civilized it really is - and how it treats and “invests” in their weakest members: kids, the sick, the left behind, the hookers, the mentally retarded and those locked away.
It just shows which societies are pressuring it’s members to conformity via the law, police and the “justice” system - while others can live with offenders and differences.
The police and courts become social cleaning services - getting rid of unwanted people.
Watchamean “protect & serve”?! Serve whom?
If there is one huge difference between EU on one side and the US, Russia and China it is this: lower prisoner rates, more social reintegration and less severe sentences for offenders. And don’t get me started on the death penalty …
It is no surprise that in many countries prisons have developed into parallel societies, where the inmates have created an alternative social system - since nobody really wants them on the outside anymore.
Sure - there will always be criminals and prisons. But such huge incarceration rates are indicators that there is something wrong with the host society - there is either political, economic or social injustice at work.
Keep Justicia smart and well funded - otherwise she might one day unjustified strike out at you …
And as much we all have to support the justice system - we also have to have an eye on injustice within our societies - because a human and fair system is something we all should aim for.
Even criminals of all ranks and deeds deserve a fair treatment, a chance to get back into society and a decent treatment while behind bars.
The criminal is the one who has misbehaved - societies should never misbehave.
Not everybody grows up with the perfect (grand)parents and in a perfect time. But that’s not important - what’s important that you want to change the presence for a better future.
We all have family members that have weird or simply terrible opinions and convictions. But we can’t be held responsible for that - only for our own actions.
Just because you rebel against something or act a bit odd doesn’t make you different. Even amongst rebels, punks and other “outsiders” to the so called system is a certain uniformity and consensus of what is supposed to be different.
In the Age of TV families shared quality moments together in front of the screen. In the Internet Age we sit quietly in our rooms and maybe chat via AIM together. Computer screens don’t provide the same social glue as TV screens.
Several people fighting for the remote control was bad enough - but a consensus could be reached which show to watch for an hour or two. But you can’t have four people controlling a computer and surf different websites at the same time.
TV serves as the radio today - it provides the noise to our life, but it is the computer with it’s highly individualized interaction that grabs our FULL attention.
So our media experience is more and more individualistic - and all these digital toys and gadgets (especially cell phones and instant messaging) keep us “busy” and distracted all the time.
In front of the TV the whole family could switch off - today that switch has been lost. We are always “ON” …
You know that ugly, terrible, totally annoying and nerve wrecking itch right between your crotch and your butt - and you are on the street or in a meeting. So you can’t whip down your trousers and simply scratch it or ask some other human to do that for you.
Chimps can. Mutually grooming, scratching, caring and cuddling is an important part of their - and many more primates - favorite social event.
I wish we would be more social like that. Our human culture could use some more backslapping, cuddles and scratching …
We credit many advances in our world to inventors - but many of them did not invent anything. They rather developed and improved existing ideas into a new technology. The steam engine didn’t pop up in Mr Watt’s head overnight - it was a long process of trial and error in cooperation with other engineers.
Before the industrial revolution there was plenty of work for everyone - not always pleasant and nice - but there was a huge demand for muscles and brains.
Mechanization took most low level, handcraft, agricultural and production jobs away, so humans had to train to be smarter than machines to keep working. Most of today’s productive work (= producing goods) is done by machines, while we have kept and expanded the so called service industries and administration (and boy, do we love our bureaucracies).
I wonder: when we run out of oil and don’t come up with an adequate supply of alternative fuel if human work might be back in demand? There are six billion of us and not everybody fancies burger flipping and filling out forms & papers.
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
An insight into the history of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl which changed views on the safety of this new technology.
More? Pandora’s Box Series
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
A look at how former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an advanced utopia. But as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn’t control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt.
More? Pandora’s Box Series
As a big SciFi fan I always wanted to have a robot as a kid. I also wanted to have a giant space gorilla who could launch missiles and teleport me to mars.
Modern parents are already using machines to babysit their offspring: they are called TVs and PlayStations. These are semi-intelligent entertainment robots to keep your kids busy.
But do we really want even more complex machines to educate, relate and raise our kids? I don’t think so. Raising humans should be a human job. People should rely less on machines and get proper nannies or tutors to get their kids a better start.
Even animals will do a better job teaching little humans about (organic) life. No matter how intelligent Robots will be some day, they are not organic beings, they are not the perfect example how to grow up and what it means to deal with the human condition.
General it’s a shame that most parents no longer care or have the time to play with their kids - they themselves are either too busy working or entertaining themselves. So in some way, we are getting addicted and distracted by digital slaves providing easy leisure …
We yourselves dehumanize our societies by being perfect consumers or too cocooned individuals.
Watching the underclass, the addicted and the stupid getting busted. Doesn’t that make you feel superior?
It is amazing how many shows there are on TV that deal with justice, law and order. It doesn’t matter if it’s reality TV like Cops or fiction like those many CSI shows (all these different offspring of the same formula are a phenomenon in itself). Each country seems to have it own mixture of court TV, forensic documentaries, lawyer dramas and car chases …
In all these shows one topic prevails: the law wins, the bad guys are caught and punished.
One would think that we would want to watch something relaxing in the evening or ignore other people’s problems - instead murder and minute details of investigation seem to be more interesting than some simpler forms of entertainment.
I’ll give you blood, you give me better ratings!
But behind all this is our natural (?) desire for social porn: to participate in what’s going on and staying informed about the newest gossip of the global tribe. It doesn’t matter if it’s a real event like O.J. Simpsons trial or such trivial crap like Paris Hilton going to jail for being a drunken pussy. We want to be informed and we want to ‘relate’ - and it doesn’t matter if it’s a petty criminal or a superstar - or even fictional character.
It doesn’t matter if it’s other humans killing each other or making love to each other - we love to watch and learn intimate secrets behind it all.
But there is another layer to this lust for justice. It’s a double sided affair of the same mechanism of ‘violence’. We all have been victims of social, emotional or even criminal violence - so we want justice, revenge or just the reassurance that we will receive justice and protection. But deep in our fantasies we are also thieves and murderers - we all had the impulse / moments in our life’s to cause mayhem to others out of anger or a simple case of road rage.
Science and bad scripts to the rescue - we bring justice on a weekly basis.
So on one side we want protection from violence - but we also love to explore and participate when others were violent or even killed. For a few minutes we can dive into the mindset of the killer, the victims and the justice system - and compare it to our own inner world. It a mental carnival in which we can play every role and explore their good and bad sides while munching potato chips.
Scientists have shown many times that we mentally and emotionally emphatize on a deep level with other people - no matter if we watch something happening in reality (like driving by a traffic accident and everybody gloats) or a fictional event (we cry when made up characters die or model our lives on their behavior).
Especially in our hysterical media world plus criminals and terrorists at each corner we welcome ’security’, ‘justice’ and ‘protection’ - even when it’s just artificial. Soothing our minds is almost as important as real justice, protection or security.
So watching violence and how others deal with it or are doing terrible stuff helps us to cope with violence in our own lives and shows us new, different or frightening ways to deal with this topic.
But real crime and real violence is no ‘game’ to explore. Especially in fictional crime the dead always return in another series and lethal injuries can be overcome with a good script. Even court TV, recreations or documentaries do not really show the blood, pain and horror or real crimes. So can’t really emphatize, we always only get a filtered nicer version of reality.
Even celebrity victims are pretty dead after being murdered by their celebrity husbands.
Before I finish the empathy aspect of the Justice Porn: it is amazing that we do not really hunger for justice. In many fictional and real stories we are rather fascinated by the dark and evil characters. Some murderers have become celebrities or have a weird cult following. It is more of a social consensus that the bad guys have to loose, not because we love justice, but because we don’t want to be on the receiving end of a bad persons action without protection and the moral high ground against ‘evil doers’.
Since we all can relate to pain and suffering we all agree / empathize that we don’t want to suffer from it. This has nothing to do with justice, this is simply egoism and self preservation.
It’s good to be the king …
One last aspect is the God-complex in all of this. Sitting there and watching the crime like God watches masturbating sinners - we ’see and know’ more than the real or unreal protagonists. We are TV Gods, we know it all - and we also judge the people in the stories and events we watch on screen.
It’s truly pornography of power for the powerless. It’s an illusion of power and simpler version of sitting on a jury bench yourself (just without any responsibility). Most of all ‘all of our couch potato opinions’ don’t have any serious consequences. The law and justice are thankfully no longer bound to popular opinions or people’s anger and rage - at least in most countries.
And that’s a good thing. Instead of ropes for lynching and stones for stonings give them TV.
Woman are socially more flexible and adaptable than men. Is that really a good thing? Or does speak volumes about the females socially weak will to stand up for her own goals, desires and personal boundaries?
Woman also like to complain about the emotional stiffness of their male counterparts - but when you are willing to bend over backwards to please your stiff male, don’t expect any extra effort from your guy to go soft on you.
We all have to jump into dark holes and make a transit into a new and foreign world in our lifes. New places, people and social platforms might feel alien or even mad to us - but part of the human experience is to learn new ‘games’, socialize and comply to group consensus.
But no matter were you travel to and whatever games you have to comply to - you should keep your inner world and not let other people’s madness infect you.
Getting to work is a stressful experience for many commuters. Traffic jams, long cues, train delays, pushing and shoving, being squeezed into a corner of a bus while trying to drink your latte macchiato.
This hardly qualifies as ‘quality’ or ‘me’ time - even if you manage to enrich your brain with a podcast or reading a book or newspaper.
For many people it’s one or two hours of their life wasted. If you commute about 220 days per year to work and spend just about over one hour in a car, bus or train - that’s almost ten days of your life gone while transporting your sorry ass to make some money somewhere …