And we fall into the trap so willingly and unnoticeably... Everyone who makes the decision to stop watching TV news is on the way to recovery and people are doing it. Kicking social media is a lot harder but not impossible. We do need to re-establish some boundaries, yes.
I recently (re)watched Demolition Man, and re-read 1984
1984 should be required reading every 5 or 10 years of a person's life. Because wow it really hit home at age 42 a lot harder than when I first read it at age 18
On the other hand - if Orwell and Huxley were predicting futures such as this, then, is it in fact our nature, our destiny, to mismanage and delude ourselves from one calamity to the next, interjected by brief periods of enlightenment which last a generation or two at most, before reverting to type?
If you’re interested in books that reflect predictions of an uncertain future you might try Kim Stanley Robinson’s most recent novel “The Ministry For The Future”. But if you want something that reflects what could, and still might have, happened post-apocalyptically in a virus-decimated world there’s non better than Stephen King’s “The Stand”, and there’s Terry Kaye’s series of “Mad Max” books of a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by a nuclear war leaving those who’ve survived fighting over oil resources, and conflicts over who has water, happy reading🤔
For those not familiar with these books: "The Stand" is ultimately a Good vs. Evil story, while "The Road" is simply the story of a man doing anything he can in a barren environment to sustain the life of his child”. Personally I feel “The Stand” is a more gripping and memorable book especially after Covid19, just saying🤔
For those who enjoy SF but would like a relief from the storm of dystopia-based novels, I highly recommend Neal Asher's Polity series. Starts with "Gridlinked" (really starts with "Shadow of the Scorpion", but reading order vs. chronological and all that).
In (one of) Asher's future, AI have taken over, but feel a certain responsibility for their parents. And not in the scary overbearing "With Folded Hands" way.
Thank you Jeff, always interested in recommendations of sci-fi novels, I’ll added it to my book list.
Every so often a SF novel comes along that could well become a classic in its own right, it’s already becoming quite a cult novel, especially among those interested in physics, and radio astronomy in searching for intelligent life in the universe, and what consequences might ensue, and in that respect I can’t recommend enough “The Three-Body Problem” it’s written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin (a Chinese computer engineer), and is the first novel of his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, the whole series is often just referred to as Three-Body Problem. The trilogy's second and third novels are “The Dark Forest” and “Death's End”🤔
I've read "The Stand" twice and while I have some misgivings about the ending, I see it as one of King's best works. I remember how it came out of oblivion in 2020. :D I'll add "The Ministry For The Future” and the Mad Max series to my reading list, thank you!
Firstly I’d like to disclose that I’m English, born in England UK with a family history going back to Celts and Vikings. This isn’t a criticism, but with respect to “Why the World Needs American Values, 2013”, perhaps all we’d be better off being educated in Chinese history and values., and in that respect I reference this recent conversation that took place in Shanghai between two Americans of Chinese origin and their guest “Cyrus Janssen” a Canadian currently residing in USA but in China on a fact finding tour - “The Media Doesn't Want You To Know THIS About China - YouTube”.
Personally I’d prefer every high schooler read books that encompass the 2016 Presidential election and Donald Trump’s (MAGA) tenure, through to present disputing of Joe Biden’s Presidency (Made In America), Putin’s (Ukraine) War, and effects of a multipolar world.
I won’t list the number of books I’ve read on USA but it’s quite comprehensive, however here’s a couple of the recent ones: Ben Rhodes’s - “After The Fall, Being American In The World We’ve Made”, and David Vine’s - “The United States Of War”🤔
Thank you, Bash! To be honest, 1984 is one of very few books I've only read once. It made me almost physically ill and I don't want a repeat of the experience. But I do agree that everyone should read it at least one, as prophylactic. Same with Brave New World.
I believe you may very well be right -- right now what our leaders are pushing us into is basically a new form of feudalism. I guess it's the most resilient system. Or at least the most tempting... A fascinating topic of discussion.
We all have a limit on the level of outrage we can sustain at any given time, and it's been exceeded this year. I've already stopped watching the endless crisis that is our mainstream news and started listening to music again.
Yes, exactly. Music is always a better option than the news. We need to have a limit to preserve our sanity. As King puts it in what I believe is his most chilling book:
“It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity."
Another good read with delightful phrasing. Well just a few people but when I feel generous it extends to the whole species. That one will stick with me all day. So will the smile it created.
Pretty much sums up my views today. Stay optimistic through it all and remember there probably are billions of people just going about their day, looking forward to their daily routine and enjoying a quiet moment in the garden 🪴. I still believe in the common man and the slow grind toward enlightenment. Will check out your fiction and hope to buy you a nice dinner and a glass of wine when I visit Bulgaria.
I share that belief. Do get in touch if you're ever in my area! I'll be happy to show you around -- there's lots of ancient history in the region where I live now and that creates an interesting sense of, how should I put it, existential continuity and "This, too, shall pass". I find it quite soothing.
First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!! May you have many, many more, as well as keep sharing your wonderful and informative musings with the the world. And you are making a difference. trust me.
I'm not sure if I've shared this quote here before, but I think it dovetails nicely into this dystopian world we seem to inhabit these days, and it has proven to be quite prescient with the passage of time.
From President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell speech, (most often referenced for its "Military-Industrial Complex" passage):
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
"The Science™" certainly has become captive to these "Elite" and the cash-cow that is government largesse, and Ol' Ike couldn't have seen it coming any more clearly than he did these 62 years later.
On a lighter note, thank you for sharing your fictional writings with us, and as a fan of fiction, I look forward to reading your works starting as early as tonight!
Thanks for all that you do, Irina. you are truly a gift to humankind.
Did you say 45? Happy birthday but I thought you were 31 or something! You don't look your age😎😎 what's the secret? Gardening? Cats? Baking? Firewood? Village counseling?
That must be because my memory is starting to fail me and I keep thinking I'm in my 30s and the 90s were, what 10 years ago? :D I try to laugh off as many of life's curve balls as I can to stay sane. Also, the laptop camera doesn't show my wrinkles. :D Baking and gardening are feel-good activities so there's that, for sure. I like the sound of village counselling!
Firstly a very happy birthday to you (which you share with my wife btw) - blessings on your house and every good wish for a fulfilled new life year. Secondly, please feel encouraged to keep writing your essays and reflections on all things energy, EU, stupid policy, dystopia and tomatoes, although I will miss the latter if you are going start practicing topic apartheid in your writing. Thirdly I am looking forward to reading your fiction and will start at the end of your canon and work backwards. Happy Birthday.
I'm always happy to learn that someone else was born on the same date as me. A happy belated birthday to your wife and many thanks for the wishes! Topic apartheid? What topic apartheid? "Dystopia and tomatoes" is basically a ready headline asking for 1,000+ words. :D Thank you for it!
If you'll be working backwards, you'd be starting with The Dreamer, Afterlife Ltd next, then Second Skin, and the Lamia last. There's more coming after The Dreamer, too. You have been warned.
Thank you, JF! I totally agree about weed-pulling. It is therapeutic though I haven't tried to give them names. I'll do that next time. Stomping on harlequin bugs is also up there with weed-pulling. It almost feels like stomping on climate propaganda.
And we fall into the trap so willingly and unnoticeably... Everyone who makes the decision to stop watching TV news is on the way to recovery and people are doing it. Kicking social media is a lot harder but not impossible. We do need to re-establish some boundaries, yes.
Interesting that your reference Huxley and Orwell
I recently (re)watched Demolition Man, and re-read 1984
1984 should be required reading every 5 or 10 years of a person's life. Because wow it really hit home at age 42 a lot harder than when I first read it at age 18
On the other hand - if Orwell and Huxley were predicting futures such as this, then, is it in fact our nature, our destiny, to mismanage and delude ourselves from one calamity to the next, interjected by brief periods of enlightenment which last a generation or two at most, before reverting to type?
Edit: Happy Birthday!
If you’re interested in books that reflect predictions of an uncertain future you might try Kim Stanley Robinson’s most recent novel “The Ministry For The Future”. But if you want something that reflects what could, and still might have, happened post-apocalyptically in a virus-decimated world there’s non better than Stephen King’s “The Stand”, and there’s Terry Kaye’s series of “Mad Max” books of a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by a nuclear war leaving those who’ve survived fighting over oil resources, and conflicts over who has water, happy reading🤔
of for a shorter read -Cormac McCarthy's - The Road
For those not familiar with these books: "The Stand" is ultimately a Good vs. Evil story, while "The Road" is simply the story of a man doing anything he can in a barren environment to sustain the life of his child”. Personally I feel “The Stand” is a more gripping and memorable book especially after Covid19, just saying🤔
For those who enjoy SF but would like a relief from the storm of dystopia-based novels, I highly recommend Neal Asher's Polity series. Starts with "Gridlinked" (really starts with "Shadow of the Scorpion", but reading order vs. chronological and all that).
In (one of) Asher's future, AI have taken over, but feel a certain responsibility for their parents. And not in the scary overbearing "With Folded Hands" way.
Thank you Jeff, always interested in recommendations of sci-fi novels, I’ll added it to my book list.
Every so often a SF novel comes along that could well become a classic in its own right, it’s already becoming quite a cult novel, especially among those interested in physics, and radio astronomy in searching for intelligent life in the universe, and what consequences might ensue, and in that respect I can’t recommend enough “The Three-Body Problem” it’s written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin (a Chinese computer engineer), and is the first novel of his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, the whole series is often just referred to as Three-Body Problem. The trilogy's second and third novels are “The Dark Forest” and “Death's End”🤔
I've read "The Stand" twice and while I have some misgivings about the ending, I see it as one of King's best works. I remember how it came out of oblivion in 2020. :D I'll add "The Ministry For The Future” and the Mad Max series to my reading list, thank you!
Dennis Prager's - Still the Best Hope" definitely should be required reading for every high
schooler
Firstly I’d like to disclose that I’m English, born in England UK with a family history going back to Celts and Vikings. This isn’t a criticism, but with respect to “Why the World Needs American Values, 2013”, perhaps all we’d be better off being educated in Chinese history and values., and in that respect I reference this recent conversation that took place in Shanghai between two Americans of Chinese origin and their guest “Cyrus Janssen” a Canadian currently residing in USA but in China on a fact finding tour - “The Media Doesn't Want You To Know THIS About China - YouTube”.
Personally I’d prefer every high schooler read books that encompass the 2016 Presidential election and Donald Trump’s (MAGA) tenure, through to present disputing of Joe Biden’s Presidency (Made In America), Putin’s (Ukraine) War, and effects of a multipolar world.
I won’t list the number of books I’ve read on USA but it’s quite comprehensive, however here’s a couple of the recent ones: Ben Rhodes’s - “After The Fall, Being American In The World We’ve Made”, and David Vine’s - “The United States Of War”🤔
Thank you, Bash! To be honest, 1984 is one of very few books I've only read once. It made me almost physically ill and I don't want a repeat of the experience. But I do agree that everyone should read it at least one, as prophylactic. Same with Brave New World.
I believe you may very well be right -- right now what our leaders are pushing us into is basically a new form of feudalism. I guess it's the most resilient system. Or at least the most tempting... A fascinating topic of discussion.
Happy birthday! Love you sharing an internal monologue so many of us are having but are unable to put it in words so eloquently as yourself.
Thank you! It's all a question of practice. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes. :)
Happy Birthday, Irina!
Thank you, Rose_Anne!
We all have a limit on the level of outrage we can sustain at any given time, and it's been exceeded this year. I've already stopped watching the endless crisis that is our mainstream news and started listening to music again.
Yes, exactly. Music is always a better option than the news. We need to have a limit to preserve our sanity. As King puts it in what I believe is his most chilling book:
“It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity."
Thank you. We need more energy savvy folks like you to be as honest and straight forward as you are.
Honesty is not really a matter of choice for me, which is why I have a problem with the people for whom it is a choice. Thanks for being here!
Another good read with delightful phrasing. Well just a few people but when I feel generous it extends to the whole species. That one will stick with me all day. So will the smile it created.
Always happy to hear I made someone smile. :)
Pretty much sums up my views today. Stay optimistic through it all and remember there probably are billions of people just going about their day, looking forward to their daily routine and enjoying a quiet moment in the garden 🪴. I still believe in the common man and the slow grind toward enlightenment. Will check out your fiction and hope to buy you a nice dinner and a glass of wine when I visit Bulgaria.
I share that belief. Do get in touch if you're ever in my area! I'll be happy to show you around -- there's lots of ancient history in the region where I live now and that creates an interesting sense of, how should I put it, existential continuity and "This, too, shall pass". I find it quite soothing.
First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!! May you have many, many more, as well as keep sharing your wonderful and informative musings with the the world. And you are making a difference. trust me.
I'm not sure if I've shared this quote here before, but I think it dovetails nicely into this dystopian world we seem to inhabit these days, and it has proven to be quite prescient with the passage of time.
From President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell speech, (most often referenced for its "Military-Industrial Complex" passage):
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
"The Science™" certainly has become captive to these "Elite" and the cash-cow that is government largesse, and Ol' Ike couldn't have seen it coming any more clearly than he did these 62 years later.
On a lighter note, thank you for sharing your fictional writings with us, and as a fan of fiction, I look forward to reading your works starting as early as tonight!
Thanks for all that you do, Irina. you are truly a gift to humankind.
You have done a thoughtful job of saying "follow the money." Hopefully the incentives will change to more realistic achievable goals. Thanks.
My pleasure, WTA!
As always, when human beings are involved, you have to examine their incentives, and unlimited BIG-$$$ from the government teat is a lucrative one.
Thank you so much! I hope you like the books. There are more coming. :)
Impressive speech by Eisenhower -- prescient indeed.
Did you say 45? Happy birthday but I thought you were 31 or something! You don't look your age😎😎 what's the secret? Gardening? Cats? Baking? Firewood? Village counseling?
Great post
That must be because my memory is starting to fail me and I keep thinking I'm in my 30s and the 90s were, what 10 years ago? :D I try to laugh off as many of life's curve balls as I can to stay sane. Also, the laptop camera doesn't show my wrinkles. :D Baking and gardening are feel-good activities so there's that, for sure. I like the sound of village counselling!
Haha, your just being funny😎😎 your memory is great. You teach us quite a lot!
You need to get a camera that lies of you having wrinkles!
I love the rest just as you do just a bit differently.
Brilliant
Firstly a very happy birthday to you (which you share with my wife btw) - blessings on your house and every good wish for a fulfilled new life year. Secondly, please feel encouraged to keep writing your essays and reflections on all things energy, EU, stupid policy, dystopia and tomatoes, although I will miss the latter if you are going start practicing topic apartheid in your writing. Thirdly I am looking forward to reading your fiction and will start at the end of your canon and work backwards. Happy Birthday.
I'm always happy to learn that someone else was born on the same date as me. A happy belated birthday to your wife and many thanks for the wishes! Topic apartheid? What topic apartheid? "Dystopia and tomatoes" is basically a ready headline asking for 1,000+ words. :D Thank you for it!
If you'll be working backwards, you'd be starting with The Dreamer, Afterlife Ltd next, then Second Skin, and the Lamia last. There's more coming after The Dreamer, too. You have been warned.
Warning noted 👍🏻
I rarely dip into comments, but doing so to wish you a happy birthday.
I agree with Jusper; you don’t look 45. Enjoy your day!
Thank you so much! I appreciate it and will spend the rest of the week feeling very flattered. :)
Happy Birthday, Irina.
I second your epiphanies.
Thank you, Daniel!
Happy birthday Irina, it has been a wonderful journey with you as we all watch the collective insanity of the climate terrorists.
I look forward to continuing it
Thank you, Andy! It has been a mad ride, hasn't it? On we go!
Happy Birthday Irina - you sweet young thing!
May you always stay sweet - no matter what the EU or America is pushing this week!
I find pulling weeds is very therapeutic, especially of you give them names, then stomp on them! Have a great day!
Thank you, JF! I totally agree about weed-pulling. It is therapeutic though I haven't tried to give them names. I'll do that next time. Stomping on harlequin bugs is also up there with weed-pulling. It almost feels like stomping on climate propaganda.