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Prince was right about "Entropy". I woke up with this this morning: Our society is declining and deteriorating (which is what entropy is), and has been for some time. It has gotten to a point where we are in "very interesting times" as Prince so nicely put it. He knew this was coming. Is anyone listening? We have GOT to start caring about other people more. There is so much cruelty in personal relationships and in the way people speak to and treat each other. We have also GOT to be more committed at our jobs again instead of being on FAcebook all day at work, then not following through with our tasks and responsibilities and disrespecting customers/patients. It is becoming all-out selfishness, greed and chaos out there, at least in the US, and we are EACH responsible for changing this. Ain't gonna be no big lightning bolt that makes everything ok again...it's got to happen at an individual level. Personal responsibility will lift the depression that is hovering over our society. | |
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The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification - Thomas Henry Huxley |
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RIP  | |
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TheEnglishGent said:
Do you disagree? | |
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What type of job are you meaning though? Whether I care or not, mine has pretty much no impact upon the world. Being on Facebook, however, has meant I've been able to counsel friends through hard times, bring some joy to my life through the humour and insights of others, and stay in touch with so many more people than I would have without it. I'd class that as far more important than what I do to make money. So look into the mirror, do u recognise some1? Is it who u always hoped u would become, when u were young? | |
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He also said repeatedly in the face of oncoming doom, destruction and armaggedon - just fuggedaboutit, party and fuck. | |
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alxndrstff said:
What type of job are you meaning though? Whether I care or not, mine has pretty much no impact upon the world. Being on Facebook, however, has meant I've been able to counsel friends through hard times, bring some joy to my life through the humour and insights of others, and stay in touch with so many more people than I would have without it. I'd class that as far more important than what I do to make money. All of our jobs matter as it is one part of a whole. People ain't gettin stuff done anymore and there's no accountability. Every real interaction we have matters too. Fakebook hardly qualifies. | |
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NouveauDance said: He also said repeatedly in the face of oncoming doom, destruction and armaggedon - just fuggedaboutit, party and fuck. Please provide a quote for this. Thank you. | |
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See: 1999, Let's Go Crazy, Crystal Ball, Play In The Sunshine etc, etc. | |
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NouveauDance said:
See: 1999, Let's Go Crazy, Crystal Ball, Play In The Sunshine etc, etc. Some of the lyrics there could be construed as that, but think of "The Love We Make". This has a double-entendre that could not be more obvious, and it's a RECENT song. I don't think having lots of sex is how this gonna get better... But maybe in a way that could be part of it... But people have to GET ALONG before they have any meaningful sex. Sex that is from real love has to have a solid house it can stand on. It's the LAST benefit of all other relationship healthfulness. [Edited 11/9/17 5:23am] | |
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Is it now? When, exactly, was it any better? And how was it better? . On a sidenote, while I shared Prince's views on certain topics and respected his views on many others that I didn't share, I never cared for his "it was better before" BS. He was just getting OLD and like most people who get old, he was tricked by various cognitive biases giving him the illusion of decadence. Being almost 41 now, I'm being extra careful not to fall into this trap and start talking like a fool. Historical records and literature teach us that, generation after generation, elder people have been saying that since the dawn of recorded history. Unless one believes things have constantly gone downhill since the Stone Age, which would then make Prehistory the peak of human happiness, it's hard to defend the position that, suddenly, at long last, after millenias of people being wrong about it, decadence is really happening. . But please ignore my comment above for the moment: before we can begin any form of debate on the topic, we need to clarify when, from your perspective, it was any better, and how. Without that, we have no clear premise to start a conversation. A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ |
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The Love we make was released in 1996, that's 21 years ago. You call that recent? |
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A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ |
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You mentioned work. Who says THIS society is the ideal society? Who says we have to work at all? There's nothing intrinsically great about getting up to go to a job to make somebody else rich.
In places like Afrika and Fiji and the Caribbean and Hawaii, people live off the land and just enjoy themselves and their neighbors doing no job other than fishing or cultivating crops to feed their family. I'd love to live like that.
Like Trump's hat...Make America Great Again. When was it great in the first place? Was it when the colonizers stole the Native people's land? Was it during slavery? Was it during the bloodbath of the Civil War? Was it when the colonists cut the slaves free with no money and no land to support themselves? Was it during the Depression? Was it during the race riots? Was it when crack was introduced into black neighborhoods? Was it when AIDS came out of nowhere to disproportionately affect Afrikan-Amerikans?
When?
This world is really screwed up. I do my best every day to just enjoy my family and try not to harm anybody else. That's really about all you can do. That and do some volunteer work here and there like Habitat for HUmanity or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. That about sums my life up. | |
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databank said:
Is it now? When, exactly, was it any better? And how was it better? . On a sidenote, while I shared Prince's views on certain topics and respected his views on many others that I didn't share, I never cared for his "it was better before" BS. He was just getting OLD and like most people who get old, he was tricked by various cognitive biases giving him the illusion of decadence. Being almost 41 now, I'm being extra careful not to fall into this trap and start talking like a fool. Historical records and literature teach us that, generation after generation, elder people have been saying that since the dawn of recorded history. Unless one believes things have constantly gone downhill since the Stone Age, which would then make Prehistory the peak of human happiness, it's hard to defend the position that, suddenly, at long last, after millenias of people being wrong about it, decadence is really happening. . But please ignore my comment above for the moment: before we can begin any form of debate on the topic, we need to clarify when, from your perspective, it was any better, and how. Without that, we have no clear premise to start a conversation. It's true that people have always been people, and there have always been relationship pro ones, crime, etc... But it is truly getting much worse now. I just broke up a fight between two guys in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot over their driving/road rage. One yielded a knife. People are carrying knives with them?? It was all their egos. Neither one would relent. Things were better in the 70s. People thought of each other and helped each other more, and that is the era Prince always felt he belonged to, as do I. As common decency erodes, I can't say I blame each generation for longing for the togetherness of earlier days. Even during the depression, people had each other, if nothing else. | |
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ludwig said:
The Love we make was released in 1996, that's 21 years ago. You call that recent? True. However it is more recent than many songs, and he carefully chose to revive it - and beautifully - for Montreux 2013. After his passing, it was probably the first song that many of us who hadn't been watching him, fell in love with his soul for. | |
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williamb610 said: You mentioned work. Who says THIS society is the ideal society? Who says we have to work at all? There's nothing intrinsically great about getting up to go to a job to make somebody else rich.
In places like Afrika and Fiji and the Caribbean and Hawaii, people live off the land and just enjoy themselves and their neighbors doing no job other than fishing or cultivating crops to feed their family. I'd love to live like that.
Like Trump's hat...Make America Great Again. When was it great in the first place? Was it when the colonizers stole the Native people's land? Was it during slavery? Was it during the bloodbath of the Civil War? Was it when the colonists cut the slaves free with no money and no land to support themselves? Was it during the Depression? Was it during the race riots? Was it when crack was introduced into black neighborhoods? Was it when AIDS came out of nowhere to disproportionately affect Afrikan-Amerikans?
When?
This world is really screwed up. I do my best every day to just enjoy my family and try not to harm anybody else. That's really about all you can do. That and do some volunteer work here and there like Habitat for HUmanity or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. That about sums my life up. 🤗 You are absolutely right. A job for money is just a way to put food on the table and so forth, so we can enjoy this life. But in this culture we do have doctors and medical staff and someone who works at the bakery and the car service center and folks who work in government agencies. When employees at these jobs are being jerks to people when they call or stop by, or they're controlling people who need something, or they're not even showing up for work (ever notice how much traffic there is now during the day?), and bosses don't have the courage to hold people accountable because they might not be liked, we've got a problem in this society. We need courageous people in charge who will say, "I want people taken care of. I want people helped." It will get better, we just goin' thru some interesting times. Like Prince said. [Edited 11/9/17 8:42am] | |
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Here, here! We should definitely show each other more compassion. I'm with you. | |
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anangellooksdown said: databank said:
Is it now? When, exactly, was it any better? And how was it better? . On a sidenote, while I shared Prince's views on certain topics and respected his views on many others that I didn't share, I never cared for his "it was better before" BS. He was just getting OLD and like most people who get old, he was tricked by various cognitive biases giving him the illusion of decadence. Being almost 41 now, I'm being extra careful not to fall into this trap and start talking like a fool. Historical records and literature teach us that, generation after generation, elder people have been saying that since the dawn of recorded history. Unless one believes things have constantly gone downhill since the Stone Age, which would then make Prehistory the peak of human happiness, it's hard to defend the position that, suddenly, at long last, after millenias of people being wrong about it, decadence is really happening. . But please ignore my comment above for the moment: before we can begin any form of debate on the topic, we need to clarify when, from your perspective, it was any better, and how. Without that, we have no clear premise to start a conversation. It's true that people have always been people, and there have always been relationship pro ones, crime, etc... But it is truly getting much worse now. I just broke up a fight between two guys in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot over their driving/road rage. One yielded a knife. People are carrying knives with them?? It was all their egos. Neither one would relent. Things were better in the 70s. People thought of each other and helped each other more, and that is the era Prince always felt he belonged to, as do I. As common decency erodes, I can't say I blame each generation for longing for the togetherness of earlier days. Even during the depression, people had each other, if nothing else. I think you're highly idealizing the past. The 70s? When New York was said to be the most dangerous place in the world and the hoods were already filled with drugs, pimps and gun violence, while young Americans were sent to be butchered in Vietnam? When child abuse and rape were treated as taboo and even less often reported than today? When, in the absence of portable cameras, police violence went totally unpunished and black lives mattered much less than today? Do you really think there was no senseless violence in the streets, such as the (statistically insignificant) incident you unfortunately witnessed? This is absurd. . As for the Great Depression, it's not an era in American history I'm extremely familiar with but being a European I know how people stood for each other in face of the depression in Europe: by electing fascist dictators and persecuting minorities. I also know enough of America at the time to know that organized crime made countless victims, that black lives mattered even less and that women and children victim of domestic or sexual abuse were so unprotected that that were little more than men's possessions along the animals and furniture. I also doubt that brawls between stupid and drunken, violent uneducated men were nonexistent at that time. We could also discuss how cool it was to be a Japanese in the USA during WWII or how cool it was to have to go and be butchered by German or Japanese soldiers. . One thing is true though, at least up until the 60s a certain facade, a certain mascarade of civilization was maintained in Western societies thanks to good manners being much more prevalent between ordinary people than today, but it could be argued that this was the fortunate circumstance of a society where social positions and power were much more strongly enforced, with people being raised in a claustrophobic system of values based on guilt, religion and fear of being an outcast if one wouldn't fit the mold. . I find your perception of life as it was very romantic, like a postcard of a middle class suburb that would ignore both the hidden, intitutionalized violence at home and the neighboring poverty areas. . Now was everything worse in the 70s, probably not. Is everything better today? Probably not. New problems arose on the ashes of the ones we've solved, and many remain unsolved. But overall, the later you were born the better. A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ |
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I'll add another thing, that is the one upsetting me. By opting for this "things are going downhill" attitude, we are doing 2 things that are totally counterproductive, particularly in regards to what we tell the youngs of today. . The first is that we deny them the rights to enjoy a world that's rightfully theirs. I remember growing among Baby Boomers who kept telling us that the world, OUR world was going from bad to worse, that our values sucked, that our manners were bad, that we had few perspectives of happiness, etc. I remember thinking "fuck you, you had your time, your world wasn't the perfect picture you're depicting and just because my world is different, just because we are different, doesn't mean it isn't, that WE are not full of wonderful things that YOU were not and that YOU didn't have!" It was really insulting this "we had it all, we were so great and you suck and your world sucks" BS. Unfortunately, many kids my age bought their BS, and were totally cynical or depressed, saying "they had the peaceful city life and easy jobs and the summer of love and Woodstock and all we got left is suit and no future". So sad... . Then there is the awful thing that is downplaying all the progress that's been made in the world (and a lot has been accomplished, believe me), which gets us nothing but depressed, angry people and populist political leaders. Yes there are lots it really wrong things going on in the world today. Why addressing them as regression? Why compare with the past in such a negative manner. Why not, instead, empasize the positive by saying "a lot has been accomplished, but a lot MORE remains to be accomplished". By focusing on progress and upcoming challenges you build a world for tomorrow. By looking behind and talk of entropy, you just dig a grave for us all to bury ourselves weeping. . I know you mean well, I know that you're really sad about the violence we have to face, I am too, but you need to pull yourself together, acknowledge your cognitive biases and fight for the future, not for the past. A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ |
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anangellooksdown said: I woke up with this this morning: Our society is declining and deteriorating (which is what entropy is), and has been for some time. It has gotten to a point where we are in "very interesting times" as Prince so nicely put it. He knew this was coming. Is anyone listening? We have GOT to start caring about other people more. There is so much cruelty in personal relationships and in the way people speak to and treat each other. We have also GOT to be more committed at our jobs again instead of being on FAcebook all day at work, then not following through with our tasks and responsibilities and disrespecting customers/patients. It is becoming all-out selfishness, greed and chaos out there, at least in the US, and we are EACH responsible for changing this. Ain't gonna be no big lightning bolt that makes everything ok again...it's got to happen at an individual level. Personal responsibility will lift the depression that is hovering over our society. Always speak your heart angel, it is a balm to me. Thanks! | |
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i read a lot of classic literature from all over the world and even in the earliest examples and true love lives on lollipops and crisps | |
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williamb610 said:
Here, here! We should definitely show each other more compassion. I'm with you. (yes) Thank you! | |
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databank said: anangellooksdown said: It's true that people have always been people, and there have always been relationship pro ones, crime, etc... But it is truly getting much worse now. I just broke up a fight between two guys in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot over their driving/road rage. One yielded a knife. People are carrying knives with them?? It was all their egos. Neither one would relent. Things were better in the 70s. People thought of each other and helped each other more, and that is the era Prince always felt he belonged to, as do I. As common decency erodes, I can't say I blame each generation for longing for the togetherness of earlier days. Even during the depression, people had each other, if nothing else. I think you're highly idealizing the past. The 70s? When New York was said to be the most dangerous place in the world and the hoods were already filled with drugs, pimps and gun violence, while young Americans were sent to be butchered in Vietnam? When child abuse and rape were treated as taboo and even less often reported than today? When, in the absence of portable cameras, police violence went totally unpunished and black lives mattered much less than today? Do you really think there was no senseless violence in the streets, such as the (statistically insignificant) incident you unfortunately witnessed? This is absurd. . As for the Great Depression, it's not an era in American history I'm extremely familiar with but being a European I know how people stood for each other in face of the depression in Europe: by electing fascist dictators and persecuting minorities. I also know enough of America at the time to know that organized crime made countless victims, that black lives mattered even less and that women and children victim of domestic or sexual abuse were so unprotected that that were little more than men's possessions along the animals and furniture. I also doubt that brawls between stupid and drunken, violent uneducated men were nonexistent at that time. We could also discuss how cool it was to be a Japanese in the USA during WWII or how cool it was to have to go and be butchered by German or Japanese soldiers. . One thing is true though, at least up until the 60s a certain facade, a certain mascarade of civilization was maintained in Western societies thanks to good manners being much more prevalent between ordinary people than today, but it could be argued that this was the fortunate circumstance of a society where social positions and power were much more strongly enforced, with people being raised in a claustrophobic system of values based on guilt, religion and fear of being an outcast if one wouldn't fit the mold. . I find your perception of life as it was very romantic, like a postcard of a middle class suburb that would ignore both the hidden, intitutionalized violence at home and the neighboring poverty areas. . Now was everything worse in the 70s, probably not. Is everything better today? Probably not. New problems arose on the ashes of the ones we've solved, and many remain unsolved. But overall, the later you were born the better. I'm talking about the day-to-day interactions among people. Yes, I miss common decency and manners and people being present instead of on their iPhones all day walking into traffic with earbuds on, thinking only of how to get ahead for themselves. When people actually wanted to be helpful to others. Now obviously these problems don't describe everyone today, but man? We're in some selfish times. | |
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purplefam99 said: anangellooksdown said: I woke up with this this morning: Our society is declining and deteriorating (which is what entropy is), and has been for some time. It has gotten to a point where we are in "very interesting times" as Prince so nicely put it. He knew this was coming. Is anyone listening? We have GOT to start caring about other people more. There is so much cruelty in personal relationships and in the way people speak to and treat each other. We have also GOT to be more committed at our jobs again instead of being on FAcebook all day at work, then not following through with our tasks and responsibilities and disrespecting customers/patients. It is becoming all-out selfishness, greed and chaos out there, at least in the US, and we are EACH responsible for changing this. Ain't gonna be no big lightning bolt that makes everything ok again...it's got to happen at an individual level. Personal responsibility will lift the depression that is hovering over our society. Always speak your heart angel, it is a balm to me. Thanks! ❤️💜 | |
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IstenSzek said: i read a lot of classic literature from all over the world and even in the earliest examples Extremely well said.  That is how it works IMHO.And because perhaps one of the most important inventions in human history is just coming of age, that being the Internet, it’s just that much easier to get instant access to the good and bad that has always existed at the same human potential. There was of course no copycat mass shootings before we could be shown them 24/7, but terrorism overall was at its worst over 40 years ago. The sky didn’t fall because most of humanity is mostly good. | |
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Welcome to "the org", Mumio…they can have you, but I'll have your love in the end  | |
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databank said: I'll add another thing, that is the one upsetting me. By opting for this "things are going downhill" attitude, we are doing 2 things that are totally counterproductive, particularly in regards to what we tell the youngs of today. . The first is that we deny them the rights to enjoy a world that's rightfully theirs. I remember growing among Baby Boomers who kept telling us that the world, OUR world was going from bad to worse, that our values sucked, that our manners were bad, that we had few perspectives of happiness, etc. I remember thinking "fuck you, you had your time, your world wasn't the perfect picture you're depicting and just because my world is different, just because we are different, doesn't mean it isn't, that WE are not full of wonderful things that YOU were not and that YOU didn't have!" It was really insulting this "we had it all, we were so great and you suck and your world sucks" BS. Unfortunately, many kids my age bought their BS, and were totally cynical or depressed, saying "they had the peaceful city life and easy jobs and the summer of love and Woodstock and all we got left is suit and no future". So sad... . Then there is the awful thing that is downplaying all the progress that's been made in the world (and a lot has been accomplished, believe me), which gets us nothing but depressed, angry people and populist political leaders. Yes there are lots it really wrong things going on in the world today. Why addressing them as regression? Why compare with the past in such a negative manner. Why not, instead, empasize the positive by saying "a lot has been accomplished, but a lot MORE remains to be accomplished". By focusing on progress and upcoming challenges you build a world for tomorrow. By looking behind and talk of entropy, you just dig a grave for us all to bury ourselves weeping. . I know you mean well, I know that you're really sad about the violence we have to face, I am too, but you need to pull yourself together, acknowledge your cognitive biases and fight for the future, not for the past. You're right. I also believe that sometimes we will hear warnings, and we need those too. But there are better ways I could've said this. | |
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Life Matters | |
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I don't subscribe to the concept that things are getting worse and worse. | |
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