Do you think things are going to get better or worse?

This is a really good question, and the answer is I have no idea. I stay way too fixated on various life circumstances that make me miserable. Things could get a lot better or worse just with changes in attitude, and they could get a lot better or worse with changes in circumstances.

Part of me thinks my rebound partially stemmed from increasing connection to people due to social media. Prior to 2006, I felt very isolated from folks, and I've used FB (even MySpace) to make new friends, hell...two relationships started partially due to convos that started there!

but it does cause me more aggravation than usual lately.

The better-ness and worser-ness of my life have been entirely defined by the unprecedented. Getting sick, losing a job, these are things that have had less of a negative effect on my state of being than, say, an unexpected news event, an overhead snippet of conversation, a look from a stranger-- all things that have at one point ruined my year.

Similarly, major completion of projects or life goals fulfilled have been not nearly as satisfying as this particular night out, or that movie we watched, or an unexpected new friendship.

In general I think things stay the same, or at least fluctuate with regularity. But I voted "worse" because all my grandparents have suffered through the last year of their life.

"nostromo do you think death is objectively worse than life?"

not death by itself but getting ill etc..

thought better, now i'm thinking worse, could honestly go either way

^ also the title for the volume of my memoirs spanning the years 2009 through 2013

i'm going to get closer to death then i'm going to die so for me, personally, yes.

shit you mean it's possible for them to get worse??

worse is always the way to bet.

but i always read "things" as involving me only tangentially

i think we are losing sight of the stated purpose of this poll. you are supposed to vote yes and then feel encouraged by your own display of confidence in yourself.

i mean, i get it. i know it's hard to keep an open heart when even friends seem out to haunt you. but if you could heal a broken heart, wouldn't time be out to charm you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE

I voted 'better', but I'm really just in a kind of holding pattern atm. haven't had a depression relapse in the 6 years since my last one, but have been living under a cloud of mild gloom/stress all year, which is weird for me.

Yes, been feeling low-level mild gloom all year. otm holding pattern. I do feel optimistic about good things happening once that breaks!

better

mainly because i will make things better if it fucking kills me

For me personally? Better.

For the rest of the planet? Worse. Much, much worse.

- doctor doom

better, then worse

voted worse

Both are too optimistic, really. If you say 'worse' then you're suggesting that the place you're at now isn't so bad. If you say 'better' then you're suggesting that there is hope.

So the answer, really, is an unending trudge through the same shit until you die.

hope for fred west, plan for fred durst

when i think about this question i always tend to think about a favorite quote from Norbert Wiener:

We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization, which tends to reduce everything to the heat death of equilibrium and sameness.… This heat death in physics has a counterpart in the ethics of Kierkegaard, who pointed out that we live in a chaotic moral universe. In this, our main obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system.… Like the Red Queen, we cannot stay where we are without running as fast as we can.

ryan, that's a good quote. I really like Kierkegaard, even though I'm not a theist.

Strangely, my reading of Kierkegaard always motivated me and gave me reasons not to believe in God. I guess it's the whole aspect of 'leap of faith'.

Having said that, this quote by him taught me to enjoy the 'little things' in life and live scientifically (it's from Fear and Trembling, which contributed to my aforementioned conclusion):

"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?"

I'm not certain of it, but I assume that my interpretation of him (and Wiener's interpretation) was very uncommon amongst most circles at one point in history. Then came CS Lewis, which is probably close to his opposite (whilst still being a theist, of course).

Not really related to this thread, but: you really can get loads more out of Kierkegaard then 'theology'. You don't need to be a 'theist' to enjoy and appreciate his work. Just saying.

in my case I just know it's gonna get worse because I keep getting sicker and feeling sicker

But to answer the thread's question: worse. Things always get worse as time passes. You enter this world without a care in the world, and end up leaving this world by death (not a great thing in itself) with loads of cares, worries, fears, love, relations, loss, loathing etc. Getting older means life is definitely getting worse, for me.

But you are handed some tools every now and then along the way to dealwithit.jpg. Mastering those seems key. I know others are fab at that, mastering those tools, whereas I am shit at it. I will always be a glass half empty person, just the way I am. And I have experienced things getting worse, more difficult, more painful: such is life, for me. But I've accepted it, too. It is ok.

I anticipate that some things in my life and in the world at large will get much better, but others will get worse.

This question is, to me, asking "is food good for you?"

pringles are

my man

Man, I'm pretty happy the way things are right now. So in a way, things are more likely to get worse than better, because I can imagine way more things that would make things worse than better. But I also can realistically see some already-good things getting even better, so...

I do think the capacity to believe that things can or will get better is pretty important to getting up every day, so I guess I'll just keep believing that until some inevitable decline renders the whole discussion pointless.

better for me, worse for you

zero sum game right there

We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization, which tends to reduce everything to the heat death of equilibrium and sameness

Wouldn't equilibrium/sameness be the ultimate in organization/order? Maybe it's just me but the idea of the ultimate heat death ending of the universe seems to be working AWAY from chaos and TOWARDS and ultimate harmony. Which is pretty cool if you prefer harmony over chaos.

i don't know if it makes sense to prefer harmony to chaos or vice versa. total harmony and total chaos both seem synonymous with death, whereas life, or experience, seems to be built on the dialectic between repetition and spontanaeity.

the tendency of chaotic systems (weather, plate tectonics, vegetation growth, Everything) to form imperfect fractals, or to sort of circle around a "strange attractor" fractal state into which the system never entirely settles but which it's always, like, romancing, always kinda cheers me up w the idea that it's in chaos that you find the shadow of the deepest order. it's enough to make me a theist! nothing to do w my life getting better, of course; my destruction will just be part of the pretty shape. but still.

(dr sattler, i refuse to believe that you are unfamiliar with the concept of attraction.)

Have had a sufficiently comfortable and 'privileged' upbringing that as I embark into the "real world", I can't help but think that things can only get worse from here on in, whichever way I play it.

:-(

there's a macro trend towards awesome
Even our shitty movies lay waste to shitty movies of past re: pacific rim
in future global warming will be seen as a shitty 00s thing like Michael bay that we will somehow be nostalgic for.

Eh, that's the way the game is played tho right? My working class grandfather works his ass off so his son can get to university (based solely on the merit of being a smart guy who worked himself to the bone in a shitty school that never rewarded effort or intelligence), he goes off and gets a high-flying, high-paying job that eats him alive and finally his son (i.e. me) throws it all in their faces by getting an Eng Lit degree that no one will touch with a bargepole, and informing them that I'd sooner bite my own cock off than work 9-5 for the rest of my life in a job I don't particularly enjoy.

But all this is venting and by the by. Basicly things will get worse before they get better, of this there is no doubt

Really it's all in your mind. There is a better and there is a worse and both are possible and it's up to you to decide which one is defining the current moment.

Difficult otm re: chaotic systems. Whenever I read about that stuff it seems like science chipping away at the cookie crust towards a creamy center of mysticism.

Have had a sufficiently comfortable and 'privileged' upbringing that as I embark into the "real world", I can't help but think that things can only get worse from here on in, whichever way I play it.

― Third Rate Zoo Keepers With Tenth Rate Minds (Windsor Davies),

opposite :-D

Fuck you very much Deems. shall comfort myself in the face of your taunting with that old idealistic dream that i am in fact down to earth enough to survive modrn lyfe without a safety net. this is of course impossible

i was taunting u with my terrible upbringing tbf

This is fair, when ur championing authenticity over legitimate living standards then you know you're spending too much time on the internet

Not meant to imply that you didn't grow up w/ legitimate living standards btw, not sure any drunekn faux pas I can come up with could surpass that

Merely meant to castigate my own hopelessly worrisome position on all this

idk tbh maybe let it rest til tomorrow and we'll untangle it then

A sound stratagem, let's let that lie

SO YOU DO THINK THINGS WILL BE BETTER THEN

win

the tendency of chaotic systems (weather, plate tectonics, vegetation growth, Everything) to form imperfect fractals, or to sort of circle around a "strange attractor" fractal state into which the system never entirely settles but which it's always, like, romancing, always kinda cheers me up w the idea that it's in chaos that you find the shadow of the deepest order. it's enough to make me a theist! nothing to do w my life getting better, of course; my destruction will just be part of the pretty shape. but still.

I've always been drawn to this solace as well. it's certainly a kind of mystical stance, in some ways. Emerson is the king of it, to the point of self-abnegation:

So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his relation to the Universe, which his ruin benefits. Leaving the daemon who suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit by his pain.

I honestly admire your stance on this. But can you explain why 'death is an illusion'? Do you mean that from a religious pov, believing in reincarnation? Or in a metaphysical way?

Because for me, death is pretty much the opposite of illusion. It is all too real.

Xp

There have been greet surprises in my life, but there are other aspects of my life things have been on a serious decline and just don't see it all improving.

*great

sorry guys i didn't want this thread to be a bummer

Yes you did Treeship, you set out to accomplish just that.

;-)

Nah, I'm cool with it. It's just the way it is. Big hug to Tera.

Thanks, I'm okay...

Hope you aren't just saying that. Do wish you the very best, you are a much loved and appreciated ilxor imho!

wish i could vote twice in this one

AWWW Thank you, I am though...

death is an illusion, so is suffering

I have a large sturdy stick you might want to meet.

Bateau eau t m

if anyone has any ideas for how things could possibly not get worse, please do share

things only ever get better because of 'er indoors, fact

i wonder how she feels about things

The big problem is that it is only human to look at the past and say "Oh i wish things had gone _this_ way" and get terribly upset at it, whereas you hardly spend any time worrying about the future. The past seems so real and meaningful and concrete and the older you get, the more past there is, adding more and more layers to what could easily be seen as the great towering disappointment that is your life so far. You can't be disappointed in the future cos it doesn't exist yet.

Before it occurs in time, a moment is full of endless possibilities. After it occurs, that moment is dead. All your memories are nothing but death.

Memories are recalled in the present moment, so that memories, no matter how well or poorly they correspond to the actual past, are not dead as they are remembered.

i spend lots of time worrying about the future and the present, p much everyone does, im sure.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

You optimists make me sick

otm

treeship voted several dozen times

the past is dead, the past is dead, the past is dead....

I feel like things are better already

well did they

hope for fred west, plan for fred durst

― mundane peaceable username (darraghmac), Monday, 22 July 2013 14:03 (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink