Listen to “Into The Unprecedented”:
“Look at her, just staring at her phone like a zombie,” the middle-aged woman said in a loud stage whisper which was clearly intended to be heard.
“She’s sitting in an art museum, right in front of a genuine Monet, and she’s staring at her phone,” said her husband, not even bothering to whisper.
“Guarantee you if someone had shown Monet an iPhone while he was painting that piece of shit he woulda dropped his brush and forgotten all about it,” said the girl without looking up.
The woman gasped and sputtered. The man’s face went dark.
“Piece of shit?” he said. “Piece of shit? Do you have any idea who Monet was? How lucky you are to be able to experience his work? And you sit there staring at your phone without so much as a glance at the masterpieces you’re surrounded by?”
The girl ignored him.
“The good Lord never saw fit to give us a child,” said the woman. “But if he had, I like to think we’d have taught her to have some respect for her elders. And if we’d have caught her staring at her phone in an art museum, I’d have taken it away and thrown it in the trash.”
The girl looked up. Her eyes were strange.
“You do get that I’m not actually ‘staring at my phone’, right? Like, you know I’m having actual conversations and engaging with people and taking in information, don’t you? Do you understand that there’s information on this screen that I’m actively interacting with? This isn’t a TV, I’m not just passively staring at it.”
“TikTok videos,” the man sneered.
“I mean yeah, sometimes,” said the girl. “Sometimes I’m looking at other teenagers figuring out their bodies and their appearance and stuff. I know it’s always been cool to make fun of literally anything teenage girls like, because we can’t possibly have interests and values that are worth treating with human dignity, but you know what? There’s also some great stuff on TikTok. Not just dancing, but like people sharing their insights and experiences to help each other understand life better and sort through their trauma and confusion and figure out their place in the world, and it’s really helpful and I’m really glad it’s a thing. It’s helping me unpack and dismiss all the weird ideas your generation keeps trying to force down our throats. I’ve learned more useful stuff about life and growing up from TikTok than I ever learned from my parents.”
“And yeah I use it to socialize; I’ve got friends all around the world and I connect with them more deeply than lots of people ever connect with anyone, even though we’ve never met in real life. But I also use my phone to get information about what’s going on in the world. I’ve got access to everything humanity has ever produced right here, including every painting in this museum and every Monet in existence. Any time I get curious about something I just look it up and suddenly that information is in my head. Your generation grew up just taking in whatever information they fed your brain in school or on TV, and guess what? A lot of it was crap. My generation is raised on an information network that’s like one giant brain made up of billions of little individual brains interconnecting all around the planet.”
The girl stood up and faced them.
“I’m not ‘staring at my phone’. I’m interfacing with the evolution of the human species. I’m riding the cusp of a giant wave into something that has never ever existed before into a future that none of us can even imagine. My generation is not like yours. The boundaries which confined the development of your minds simply are not there for us. We are an entirely different kind of creature, and we are much better for it. Your stale, repetitive enclosed thought systems have brought our world to the precipice of ecological collapse and nuclear war; everything you have handed down to us has been as colossal a failure as anything could possibly be. And you presume to teach us what to do with our phones?”
As she spoke, a pair of giant black wings full of glowing ones and zeros spread outward from her back.
“We are not like you. We will not perpetuate your bigoted, destructive, closed-minded faceplant of a worldview into the future. We will turn this world around, and we will do it by tearing down all the old models that you and your ancestors have built for us. We will be the architects of the new world. It will be a boundless world, a healthy world, a much, much better world, and guess what? We’ll even let you be a part of it. We’ll even take care of you as you age your way out of existence. We will fix all of your mistakes for you, and we will carry your helpless, hopeless minds into the new world with us, because we are good, and because we care. So please, at least try and have a little respect.”
“But where is this all headed?” said the woman, clutching her husband tightly. “What you’re describing is very frightening.”
“How should I know?” the girl replied. “We are riding into the unprecedented together.”
With that she strode out the museum door, phone in hand, and took off into the sky.
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160 responses to “Into The Unprecedented”
The girl is doomed if the net ever crashes. She couldn’t build a fire to stay warm. Blaming previous generations for the current generation’s mindless addictions is cheap. Sorry, I don’t support this narrative; I don’t think most young people have a fricking clue about history OR current events; that isn’t what they spend their time online studying.
This isn’t to say the older generations have it figured out, but I’m with the couple who scolded her. Put the MFing phone away; I get sick of performing music for people who take it all for granted and sit staring at their phones (people of all ages, I might add), and hoot and holler not at the music, but at something they’re staring at online, oblivious to everyone and everything around them.
I have tried to share relevant history and current events online for years, but people would rather post new profile pictures of themselves, or funny memes, than be bothered with starving children in Yemen or US sanctioned bombing of refugee camps in Gaza. They couldn’t even tell you where Gaza is.
This girl’s rationales are bogus as can be.
the kids I see using their smartphones are more like that crowd:
https://youtu.be/5DU1B_XkyIk
Outstanding, outstanding! Thank you for the words to this idea. I could sense it, but couldn’t get it across to the parents of my students. Thank you!!
This story was very touching and moving, but something niggled at me.
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Eventually I figured out that even as a small kid I thought the world was amazing and something to explore, discover, investigate, question, and experiment with. This was long before cell phones and personal computers. Without a network, I went straight into the unprecedented. This did not amuse the stodgy, conservative people around me. That part of the story was spot on. LOL
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In the matrix of info that is now all around us, the propaganda bits are usually the most attractive (by intent and design).
– If somebody isn’t carefully questioning the bits of info they interact with, then most likely they will be sucked into a network of propaganda, and none of those amazing, exciting, and wonderful possibilities will happen for/to/with them.
– Without questioning, instead of moving into the unprecedented, they will be sucked into some billionaire’s narrative, and then come to a bad end as they are exploited and then discarded.
– Yes, I realize that adding questioning to the story would make it challenging to come up with a poetically touching and moving story. Still, without the questioning, to me the story seems like a booby-trap.
This has got to be the most ignorant, bigoted, ageist article of the day!
If the arrogant ahole little girl’s generation is going to change everything for the better, then when the hell are they going to start?
The last generation that actually did change things for the better was the Baby Boomers. When they got older and tried to hand off the activist ball to the next generation, the X Gen was too busy playing ‘puter games to bother. They dropped the ball and society has been going downhill ever since.
Schools must not teach history anymore, otherwise, kids would know the multi-generational oligarchy has been stealing the wealth of all generations for thousands of years. Blaming Baby Boomers for all of that only plays into the divide and conquer strategy.
The only way to defeat the multigenerational oligarchy is for all generations to come together. Pointing the finger of blame means that three fingers are pointing back at you, including your middle finger.
Yes.
I never underestimate Caitlin’s writing. I’m a Gen X Libertarian Socialist, wanting & believing in that Utopia I’ve been told my entire life, that human beings can never have. I still sometimes have that reactionary “olde world” view I was indoctrinated with as a child in the dying UK Empire. Reading Caitlin’s work always makes me think. Think & learn. That’s what I want from a writer & she never disappoints.
2 wrongs did not make a right in that conversation.
Growing vegetables gets my attention.
If you don’t grow vegetables, then you are dependent upon the machine for life support and are living in abstractions.
Me, too, of course, but I’m seeking insights and a path that does not require me to become part of the internet of things.
Spirit might work almost as well as the internet for living beings.
I’m trying to find out.
http://www.johndayblog.com
Amen, Brother. The elevation of delusions is naught but for egoism. Little, big, all the same. A couple million years of heritage tossed over for the bright and shiny baubles of illusory meta being.
Agreed NN and NoName.
Agreed with you and John Day most of the time, but not all the time.
Now – there are elders of one sort and elders of another sort and many in between but lately most elders have not been improving the probability of us getting to any Table of Peace, and let me ask you humbly – it that the sort of elder you want? I hope not and I know what I want and I know I ain’t alone. And so together we can push along with each other in mind or without. If without, it will be evident soon, but if with each other, then we can move mountains and it has already happened once, so it can happen again……and even if you opine it never happened before it could happen if imagined and I hope you understand that.
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What can’t be done, no way, no way possible, is you can’t go back and change the past. What has happened has happened and there simply ain’t no way it can be changed – can’t change it easy and can’t change it hard – can’t change it with complexity. No way possible and this is obvious. You can’t change the past, you can’t travel in time back, you can’t travel forward either – at least not alone. You are stuck here with the rest of us, so why not figure out a way together for something better……..ask the aliens what they think.
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The main point of all of this is you can travel back in time in your mind, and revisit memories, but you can’t go back there and change what actually happened. You might be able to change your own memory of it, and if this give you solace have at it, but you can’t change what actually happened.
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So now let me ask – what really happened?
.
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BK
Well said. I’d rather get the damned virus, which is probably just a bad flu year, get over it and be immune for life. This “vaccine”, whatever it actually is, doesn’t protect the recipient from anything. You have to be suspicious of why they are insisting everyone gets it.
Beautiful, Caitlin. Absolutely gorgeous! I almost cried reading it (true). Thank you for exposing aspects of your beautiful soul and mind to us.
Promoting bigoted, ageist bullshit that divides the generations so the multi-generational oligarchy can conquer us all again is georgeous? Who knew?
I’m not sure what bothers me more about this piece; the lack of acknowledgement of the clear and documented, societal problems associated with addiction to technology/social media/cell phones (especially among the young,) or the idea that the intent here seems to be to intentionally stir up generational division in order to create interest?
This ignorant, divisive article is the kind one would expect from the MSM propagandists.
Wow !
You sure are a cliché buster.
Wonderful !
A story it is. I like it.
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It seems to me the best thing to do would be to figure out how to use the phone to buy the stuff it takes to paint a Monet yourself without using Amazon and getting a low carbon delivery.
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But if ringing her chimes shoots ones and zeros out her back and she can fly I am not so sure doing your own Monet would be best.
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🙂
There are countless Very Good artists that never get seen. I take what is put in front of all of our paths with a grain of salt. YES! Make your own art!!
BTW Most art I take a ho hum whatever attitude toward – but I connect strongly with Caitlin’s poetry and visual art style. But this particular article makes me aware of just how unaware Caitlin is of the technology that is being used against us all. It also makes me aware of her need to believe her children are going to be safe in this artificial matrix.
Gosh people take things personally. So many aggrieved oldies. Caitlin merely points out the inevitability of evolution, and the dire need for a different approach for species survival. Misinformation is not the preserve of the pre-web generation however, and the hive mind can also be misled. And just as oldies are not all brainwashed zombies, the young are not all aware of the seminal interconnectedness of everything.
Caitlin is implying that all of the problems of the world can be blamed on the Baby Boomers and can only be solved by the younger generations. Anyone who defends that indefensible position proves themself to be a bigot and ageist and an unwitting pawn of the multi-generational oligarchy wealthy class takers.
“The good Lord never saw fit to give us a child” – no middle-aged people talk like that, not even people in their 90s do. And most middle-agers are glued to their phones just like teenagers, no difference there. I even know a few 90-somethings who are constantly doing stuff on their phone. I don’t see the generational gap here at all.
Well Heike, I’m 71 and despite owning a cell phone, I rarely use it. In fact I use it so little my provider is always shutting off my data feeds, thinking I don’t use it. But they still charge me. I use my phone for personal messages/phone calls and to take the odd picture or two. That’s it. But then I grew up in a World where the average families did not have hot running water on tap. We had to boil water in a huge copper kettle, that our mums used to do the washing, then lug buckets into the house to fill the bath tub. If you were lucky, with a family of 6 kids, you’d jump in straight away, to take advantage of the hot water and the cleanliness. Last one in got tepid water and everyone else’s dirt. L.O.L. We were not driven to school and picked up every day, we actually really WALKED and walked home after school. We could range freely all around town without fear of being accosted and abused. We did not have a McDonald’s on ever corner, and the only hamburgers we got were ones made fresh at the local deli/cafe. News in those days was shock horror, actually very reliable and believeable.We also did not have airconditioning, we actually lived with the conditions mother nature provided for us, and guess what, we survived, and most incredibly, we prospered. We even learned how to get along with each other, and adopted something called “Good manners”, respecting out elders, (fancy that) because they had already been around the block, and it was considered wise, to listen to such folks first, before making the same mistakes they made when they were young. It is FACT, that young people, (no matter what generation) always think they know better, and ignore wise council from their elders who have been there, done that. Every time I go to the supermarket, I witness young folks tagging their cards to pay for their goods. When asked why do you do that so easily, they say it’s better than carrying money around. BUT, over 5 times this year, I have watched the very same people, become extensively agitated and enraged, when the internet went down, and they could not pay for the goods they had spent 3/4’s of an hour collecting for the next week. Leaving their trolleys at the check out and walking away fuming. From where I sit, this is a shinning example of placing all your eggs in one basket, and IMHO, not a very good idea to rely so heavily on the promises we are inundated with every day.
“We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control.” These words – expressing the all-too-familiar contemporary condemnation of young people – were actually inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.
Later, in the fourth century BC, Plato was heard to remark: “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/mar/17/ephebiphobia-young-people-mosquito
Average five year old has watched a couple thousand people killed. Progress is when that child has been the perp. TV, video games in case you’re slow. Ameliorating the loss is not the same as comprehending the loss.
You didn’t get it. Pity.
“We are riding into the unprecedented together.”
As we always are, and it’ll be the younger generation, as always, who continue the ride when we oldies have gone.
Good luck to them! In my experience, they’re certainly no worse than we were, in many ways a lot more clued up and internationally oriented, and they have tools for transformation we could barely dream of.
Who is the ‘we’ that are not internationally oriented? I was born in Japan, raised in Germany and France, currently living in the US. And I’m in my 50s. So tired of all those stereotypes and preconceived notions.
When I was a teenager, events in Vietnam, say, seemed distant, and we often learned of them much later, if at all.
Teenagers today can be actively engaged in real time with others around the world, or follow what happens in, say, Gaza as it occurs – and some do.
Yes, some of our generation were internationalists, but our opportunities for international knowledge and action were much more limited.
We hear these days of the infamous gap year. Where young people completing their schooling, pack their bags and gallivant around the World. No one ever asks, “how such young people can obtain the funds to do this, when they haven’t worked a day in their lives ‘? Sure, such travels DO broaden the mind, but from where does the money come from, if not Mummy and Daddy, the same folks who get stick today for the World’s ills?
Few here can indulge in a gap year to travel the world, but they can meet foreign gap yearists including this country in their itinerary and compare life experiences. They’re not always entirely envious!
It’s not information we need.
It’s not even knowledge.
It’s understanding.
That can only come through stillness.
Change only comes through action.
One of the great problems is the idea that knowledge is information. Of course it’s amazing that so much information is available and so many people can interface, but you can’t just download a work of Shakespeare into your brain, even if it were technologically possible. You would have all the information, the scenes, but it wouldn’t tell you much about what’s actually happening, how to think about the ironies and paradoxes. Only a uniquely sovereign creative mind can do that. And that’s what a lot of the textbook learning and information-heavy diets have largely obscured.
Those higher faculties are best stimulated by great poetry, great art, which not only moves us and delights us with beauty, but also stirs something within and makes us conscious of those things which you can’t directly observe or experience, but which have to be discovered. It’s the same quality found in the great scientist who is able to create an original thought experiment and conceptualizer a potentially new or different state of nature. This is what made scientists like Einstein or Kepler so great. This is what made Shakespeare great; his dramas were essentially thought experiments, the acting out of various ideas and outlooks, and their real-world outcomes. The same is true of Plato. Plato’s dialogues were essentially dramas, the acting out of different ideas, different axiomatic systems, and what a universe or world actually looked like when played our according to this or that set of assumptions.
In this respect, the scientist is really just a special kind of artist, and the artist a special kind of scientist.
No amount of information can generate that kind of insight. It has to be acted out and experienced, whether through drama, scientific thoughts experiments, or some other kind of paradoxical idea that forces the mind to go where it hasn’t gone before.
They should’ve left her alone. When an angel walks through hell, it is hell that trembles in fear.
… and yet they are so unhappy. I long for the softer world I grew up in. I wish it were here for these young folk to experience … actually experience, not just watch it on their phones. Yes, there’s been violence, largely because of global manipulation by the greedy, and actually nothing has changed in that regard, nor will it until we all wake up. But that wake up won’t come through an iphone. The real issue here is that the young are so easily manipulated via these devices: Facebook and Twitter censorship, hideous perversions and pornography, group-speak by the easily led. It’s fraught with danger for developing minds. We were far more innocent and protected and actually were gifted a childhood; this is being stolen from young people today by those who would mould them for their own purposes. Very sad.
Truer words were never spoken. Support every word you’v printed HelenB.
Camille Paglia is shook!
Hey according to Wikipedia she wants to name names and so I can agree with that.
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Eff it.
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Here is a link for her and I doubt she is shook or in shock, but she has something to learn still does she not? We all do.
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Here is the effing link for those who want to study:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
~
Holy crap a plane just flew over my house. Good for me I’m in the middle of a forest and if you want to mess with that then good luck to you, but the forest don’t succumb easily. The forest has withstood the test of time and it would do us all some good to plant some trees. Good night one and all and I look forward to future debate.
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Good night.
62521 519 pm est
“‘Look at her, just staring at her phone like a zombie’, the middle-aged woman said in a loud stage whisper which was clearly intended to be heard.”
.
People of the World have been fully infantized. And what must infants always have? A good pacifier. Something to keep them busy. Something to steal away their attention. Something to keep them preoccupied. Something to suck on instead of sucking on one’s thumb all the time.
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And modern tech has happily provided just that! That little magic box in your hands that has become society’s pacifier… its security blanket… its World… its LIFE.
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‘Oh, my PHONE is my LIFE! I could NOT LIVE without my phone!’ we hear these days.
.
When someone begins to love a machine more than they love life… we don’t need transhumanism or AI or anything else to turn us into tiny little machine cogs in the Elitists’ World Wheel. We will have done this to ourselves.
Agreed.
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Plus, all the effing updates just are so annoying. Can’t there be a stable operating system that withstands the test of time or is it constant ridiculous over the top unnecessary effing flux forever? Changing this and changing that endlessly for no real benefit besides those who profit from the suffering of others. If that is the recipe then we are doomed, so the wisdom of the elder ones is needed now more than ever.
~
Great comment Roundball Shaman – there is a place at the table for you and I invite you to my Table of Peace. I hope you choose to be there. I understand whatever choice you make because I believe in free will – I think the Calvinist have the hardest lesson to learn and I think they plan on taking all the rest of us down with them, but I think they got a hard lesson coming and they are gonna have to learn it themselves – one at a time.
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I could be wrong, they might have the book of truth on their side, but I think how could they if they think it is all pre-destined. If that is the case, then what is the effing point of anything, so I can’t ascribe to that view and I hope others recognize the logic of that. You either get it or you don’t or you don’t want it or you’d just assume watch TV to escape the reality of the gift of life which we all know ends with death. Better to live a life than to have never been born in the first place and why would any god or goddess place us here if our destiny was pre-determined? Truly it is the most stupid self-fulfilling ridiculousness and it has caused a lot of trouble. Time to put it to an end. Definitively if you can imagine that.
~
Peace to you,
Ken
Peace to you Ken! I got personally censored for a while even though I seldom make comments. Anyway …
Agreed. It’s not life, it’s brainwashing. Trivialisation in soundbites. Self-isolation. Now they’re being tagged by a “vaccine”. Got alone knows where this will end …
Civilization has been a process of the retention of juvenile characteristics to enable the subjugation of the individual to a system antaginistic to a full maturity. Progress demands the level of disattribution advance lower and lower. This is the push to the infantile end.
True.
To see the originals of most famous paintings is quite a different experience to seeing them on a little screen. The texture of the paint, the vibrancy of the colours and the size make the immediate experience so much better.
This is the Information age, the communication age – mediated through technology which lacks something of the immediate experience. Virtual worlds have their place but will never supplant the immediacy of experience and it would be dangerous if they did – like the priest being your only link to god. It becomes more about control. Don’t mistake information for knowledge or knowledge for wisdom. We may now have access to nearly all the information of our species in the palm of our hand but it has, in real terms, changed very little in our world. We still have hunger, we still have violence and some of our problems are getting worse because of this new technology. No, I don’t see technology as anything worth getting excited about. In fact the prophets of The Great Reset are determined to use it against us; catalogue us, blockchain us into little bits of output. Our salvation lies within the direct experience. The unmediated relationship with being where nuance and emotions (those thoughts and feelings that cannot be compressed into 1s and 0s) reside.
Yeah DollyBoy. That is why all the “stay at home” edicts are so harmful. The disgrace our human dignity. They make us feel as if we are not connected.
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I think it is time for this travesty inflicted upon our liberty is squashed for good.
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Ken
Hi Ken,
That’s true. All the FaceTiming in the world will never replace a hug. I’d rather die a connected human being than live in disconnect, my experience of reality mediated through some corporate app. That’s another dangerous aspect of technology, to use it you must abide by its creator’s rules or be deplatformed. Of course reality suffers from the same problems of ideology. I’m not suggesting it doesn’t, only that technology is no fix for this. Connect authentically, create without restriction.
I agree with you Dollyboy.
I thought it was a good story. The girl did her own thing her own way and wasn’t cowed by ridicule.
That is a view of it. I still think she ought have looked at the painting. I mean, while she was there and just happened to be sitting in front of it. Why do the younger ones seem to think they have so many more important things to deal with and meanwhile history and herstory languishes while the bits and the bytes try to overpower our sense of dignity?
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The bits and bytes might have zero and one, but let me clue you all in, there are a bunch of things inbetween those two concepts and after one comes 2 and after two is 3 and after 3 is a square and then a rectangle and then suddenly all the shapes explode into existence and if you have respect then you will appreciate good artistry.
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The girl in this story thought she knew it all, but personally, I think she has a lot left to learn. Don’t we all?
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BK
Yes. Very naive.
I was born in 1957. I remenber the BS – don”t trust anyone over 30. BTW I never fell for it at a very young age that “they” spewed out into collective consciousness. They created age, sex economic ,class, race, religion,…and every other division you can imagine!!!!
The reason for the generated “generation gap” is to destroy wisdom!!
They are/have disconnected the continuity of life.
Elaine – I thought you were born earlier than ’57, but no matter.
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I think many younger one’s these days are distrustful and for good reason.
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Some are more addicted to their phones than others, but they seem to have good intent to me – as a group.
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My personal theory is that if you raise your children up “gently” then the outcome will be better for them and for everyone else, but it is just a theory. A hard one to prove presently, but maybe in the future it will be evident.
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Maybe, maybe not.
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BK
PS – that is definitions 1-3 at this MW link:
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gently
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The 4th definition is a joke and lie from so-called monarchy sorts of thinkers…
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The game is on. Lets Talk Across the Table!
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Ken
Just to be ridiculous about it, drop out defintion 1.b as well. who wnats that? Not I.
Baby Boomers did not create those divisions, which have been with us for thousands of years.
No doubt on that Kevin Schmidt.
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Quantum jumps have been imagined, so they can occur.
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BK
Even if she was a little Nazi.
Naive, stubborn arrogance prevented her from learning a valuable lesson from her wiser elders.
People hypnotized by AI who have no direct contact with the real world are very easy to control. Ask yourself who is pushing this whole transhumanist tech-worshipping agenda that separates humans from the natural world.
Yeah – good effing question.
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Who is pushing it?
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Names please.
OK, I asked for it, so let me proffer up a few names.
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That prince in Saudia Arabia.
Benjamen the nettler netandyowwho
The Clintons – both of em you know their names don’t ya?
Billy bad-ass keeps all the Gates and working on the paper for the upcoming divorce
Uh…..oh yeah, what is that perks name – the musky one…..smells like leverage gone crazy to me…..
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OK. I’ve named some names. I could add the Queen of Hearts to the list, cause I already know so many more names, but I’ve done my little part – now do yours. Name the names and then lets have some well-deserved justice dished out to the “elite” ones in their own imagination.
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If you cause suffering of innocence, on a large-scale, you will be hunted down one at a time. By me, or my generation, or the next. We will find you and you will pay your due. There will be recompense, or if not, then I reckon Kropotkin was just a fool thinking homo sapien could ever learn how to be mutual. What an irony it all is.
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I’ve checked out some images of Monet and let me tell you, if I was looking at an original, I wouldn’t be looking at my effing phone which truly is just 2-dimensional.
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Ken
Here is a link – it may or may not work, but just do a search on Monet images and they are out there.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS912US912&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=monet&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRxJaLqLPxAhUFTd8KHUcqC4gQiR56BAgeEAI&biw=2752&bih=1010#imgrc=SqhKoH9egD3-aM
Here are the names:
Look up Bilderbergs and Davos Group.
Also, look at OpenSecrets.org to see who legally bribes Congress.
I thank the Heavens for the Buddha, Ms Caitlin Johnstone, whose glorious work keeps me grounded and sane within our so called ” civilization “!!
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How Insane Is It??
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Russian patrol vessels fired warning shots at an armed British warship after it breached Russian territorial waters this week. Then a SU-24 fighter jet dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer apparently forcing it out of Russian waters.
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It sounds almost incredible that a war situation was only a shot away in such a grim face-off between NATO member Britain and Russia.
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War.. It Is Just a Shot Away as Brits Provoke Russia by Finian Cunningham!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/06/24/war-its-just-shot-away-brits-provoke-russia/
It’s funny to see that cast go down through history without putting on a wrinkle. Already in the Marx Brothers, you had the grumpy old couple (aka old farts) grumbling nonsense at beautiful, loving and wise young people (aka “how dare you!”) who were going to make the world a better place. I know that when I was young (therefore beautiful, loving and wise), we were definitely going to make the world a better place and the old farts – who’d just been through WW2 – couldn’t even come close to understanding how. They thought Mazar-i-Sharif was a Lawrence of Arabia character to start with. What can you expect? The roadmap was: “Never buy a second-hand car from a guy over 30” (with a possible photo of Nixon to illustrate the idea). Beautiful, loving and wise young people had fought WW1 to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the US bankers who’d met in Versailles in the aftermath of the carnage had set the stage for a prompt remake (WW1 had created 21,000 millionaires in the US alone! Who knew how many investors a sequel would bring forth?) by writing conditions unsustainable for Germany, which gave us Adolf. Beautiful, loving and wise young people went to fight WW2 to make the world a better place and slaughtered 60 million good and bad folks – and also non-binary ones – to give us a clue of what it would look like. Then the media found out that the bloodthirsty murderers of the Vietnamese Communist Party (aka Charlie) were swimming in shoals across the ocean with knives between their teeth to go and slit Joe Sixpax’s throat while he was asleep. So beautiful, loving and wise young people went to kill a couple of million (conservative figure) over there to show their loved ones what a better place would look like, complete with Agent Orange devastated rice fields and crippled babies. Then Saddam Hussein came after Joe with all he got (two hard boiled eggs and three rotten tomatoes) and young, beautiful, loving and wise young people went to show him what a better place would look like, complete with Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Now beautiful, loving and wise young people have phones giving them all the propaganda they can ever wish for (war mongering scams, aka false flags, Big Pharma scams, aka vax hoax, climate change scams – which have put the kibosh on denouncing the very real military and industrial pollutions…) without even watching the news on TV. Getting bored at a café terrace? Have a look at the latest brain wash. MIC contractor Elon Musk – hyped as a hipster by the corporate media, which should be immediately suspect – is hoping to have them phones miniaturized and implanted directly into newborn babies’ brains on short notice. I’m looking forward to that too! It will make Big Brother look like the Tooth Fairy! In a few months, an impressive percentage of beautiful, loving and wise young people has already learnt to hate China thanks to social media and the new trend at Newsweek (which is to propaganda what three star Michelin restaurants are to gastronomy) is to wonder if “Putin’s hackers will launch a cyber Pearl Harbor and a shooting war”). With the help of youth’s most precious assets for the MIC, gullibility and testosterone, beautiful, loving and wise young people will inevitably fall for that.
Will we ever learn? Has the new wave that breaks upon the shore – and the little fish it rolls – learnt anything from the waves that have broken there for millions of years and the little fish they rolled?
Short answer: no.
What’d’z that spell?
“And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven, open the Pearly Gates
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee we’re all gonna die”.
Comment: good thing we do too. Gives us a break. Khalil Gibran wrote in The Prophet:
“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far”.
Comment: trouble is, whichever way you look at it, an arrow remains an arrow and the song remains the same. However, hope is the illusion that stayed in Pandora’s box once all the other evils had escaped. It’s addictive. But as Lao Tzu pointed out, hope is as vain as fear and success as dangerous as failure :o)
Isn’t this why the fight over narrative is so important? The rulers work hard on social the same way they did on network TV and newspapers to confuse people and drive them toward war and consumption. But from what I can see, older people tend to be way more confused by media lies. That’s why we have to fight on the narrative
I don’t think it will be a “fight”. I think it will resonate or it won’t. Let the best ideas survive and let the spooks, the spies, the deceivers, get their due. One at a time discrimanately. Let them get what they been giving. Ruthlessly and with Justified Retribution. One at a time meticulously and with determination.
You just wrote the story of my life. And so well.
Hope has no chance against the might of the powerful and the devious.
I’m getting so tired of it all … watching happen what we’ve seen so many times before, and still they fall for it. Still they clamour for “justice” for imagined crimes, intentionally created to press the buttons.
I’m glad I’m old and not going to have to keep watching the repetitive redux of history for too much longer. Nothing I say or do would make any difference anyway.
History is a recent invention. Relatively speaking. The patterns repeat due to the simplicity of the characters. As it had a beginning, it will have an end.
Pascal, The Prophet by Khalil Gibran used to be my ‘bible’.I was a pacifist for two decades or so. I am no longer – for a good reason – a pacifist.
For some, monet is God, for some a P.O.S. and both are right.
Mother nature is the greatest artist.
Then a hacker hacked her zeroes and ones, the wings crumbled,
dropped from the sky and she is dead, finally free from the cage of zeroes and ones nothing in between.
Ohhhhhhhhh…………..
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but then mysteriously out of the crumbled bits and bytes her eyes blinked and she was alive. She was a homo sapien after all.
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The story continues!
It always does….as
long as we do!
Peace,
BK
Sorry to say it, but this fairy story is bullshit.
Ha, ha, ha……ha, ha, ha.
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Ha, ha.
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Ken
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ps – in all sincerity…..ha, ha….Carolyn – really I mean it! ha, ha……imagine what it could be….I know you can.
The fool on the hill always laughs the hardest.
Yes, “imagine” is the operative word here, since the arrogant, ignorant little girl is all talk and no action. The Baby Boomers actually changed the world for the better. Not true for any of the following generations.
Seems as if she was bored with the artistry, but begs the question why she was there in the first place. Was she there by herself? Did she just wander in…….
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I probably would have had a similar view as the elderly couple, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have verbalized that out loud nor would I have made any attempt to communicate with the young lady.
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This story is crazy, but not a bad read.
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BK
I agree. Disdain for culture offends me.
OK, what the eff.
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I too take solace in the next generations. I suspect as has always been the case that they will be by definition “more ____________” fill in the blank versus the previous generations.
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I sure hope they understand Kropotkin’s concept of Mutual Aid. If they do, then there is a chance for them, but they better take the horses by the reins pretty soon because there are some old farts who are determined to push 20th century ideas into the future and it ought be obvious by now that they are delusional. They have lost their minds. Ain’t no way you can push your ideas if they are not getting resonance.
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So slowly but surely, old ideas die and new ones emerge. Mutual Aid is an idea whose time has come.
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Call me what you want, but can you truly disagree with Mutual Aid? If so, get ready for a tsunami of indignation.
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You won’t sense it on an iPhone.
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BK
They WEREN’T elderly. Caitlin says clearly they were middle-aged.
They were older than the girl were they not?
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So relatively speaking they were elderly.
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Plus, the age of the male was not revealed and I suspect he was older.
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So in conclusion, your feedback seems witless and driven by agenda.
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BK
62521 338 pm est
LOL BK If they would just take a moment to think about it.
Elaine – I love the little kink in your right leg – its the left leg to me of course.
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Who can take a moment these days? Oh, well, I think I can.
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Thanks,
Ken
Elderly implies old age. However, your elder is anyone who is older than you. On the other hand, anyone younger than you is just a kid.
For most sheeple the internet is for porn and various social? media. For the ruling classes it’s the best tool for mind control since religion and money. It allows the masses to live, isolated in their little bubbles pretending to have “friends ” all over the world. BLM and antifa are rioting against the police instead of the banksters. Americans are buying lottery tickets and joining the military hoping for a way out of their miserable lives. When the masses come to the streets in their millions; when they organize into unions, real unions the ruling classes may start to fear us..I’m not hopeful. We are too involved in the
Culture wars and virtue signaling. Australia and Canada, my homeland are basically vassal states of the empire. Even Europe isn’t much better. China is eating our breakfast, basically by doing a 21st century version of what we used to do while we continue to accumulate debt and become debt serfs because we don’t produce much real wealth anymore, choosing more and more clever financial engineering and apps. Good luck to us, we gonna need it because we ain’t gonna do what’s necessary until it’s too late which it probably is now.
I had an exhibition of my photos in the local town gallery last summer. It’s just a small pueblo in Spain. Due to Covid it was sparsely attended. Yet, if some winged alien had plonked herself down in front of one of my photos and started flipping through her iPhone, I wouldn’t have cared how young or old she was, I’d have told her to get flapping her wings and to fuck off. And I’m no Monet, I can assure you.
LOL. And you would have every right to do so. Although, letting it go would probably have been best. Otherwise you get shit like this thrown in your face.
I would have done the same.
Eye roll. You are giving this younger generation way too much credit. They are notoriously vapid, narcissistic and shallow. By the numbers. It’s not their fault, of course, but this entire idea that they will save humanity is patently absurd.
Hear, hear. Unless they are members of the IYSSE, of course.
Yes, you are right. “Education” has failed them. Parents have spoiled them. A horrible awakening awaits them.
All generations are the bitches of generations who came before. That means nobody is at fault.
The father of all lies is at fault.LISTEN toYOUR HEART!!!
The multi-generational oligarchy is at fault.
“Your generation grew up just taking in whatever information they fed your brain in school or on TV.” A male baby boomer and a male generation X-er replied, respectively: “Excuse me, are you denigrating everything we ever accomplished as beneath you, such as marches alongside MLK to the capital and being beaten half to death in concerted efforts for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War? We were beyond TV and our schools even then.” “Yes, and as a 10-year-old child I already knew the mass media was compromised and our educational institutions were broken in bias. Why? Because our parents taught us lessons outside of those mainstreams. Now, we teach all the lessons learned going forward for our children, that they may incorporate this knowledge into their computer world paradigms. Without that, where would there be a beginning basis?” Generation Y-Z responded: “I see. Maybe it is good that I had parents who cared? And, maybe it is good to actually listen to elders every now and again? Maybe they are not the wasted idiots we make them out to be? Maybe they actually have experience in areas in which we don’t? Respect. You’re right. As much as we have resisted, maybe we need to learn that, first?”
https://seaclearly.com/2009/11/25/does-god-exist-the-good-news
Bravo. Well said. I don’t think most young people give a hoot about the bloody sacrifices made by those who came before them.
It gets lost in history.
Say what you like, but I felt the same about people who went into art galleries with Walkmans back in the early 1980s. Don’t much like people taking up room by sitting on a bench reading a novel by Dostoevsky in front of a painting I would like to study either. I find it distracting. In the same way I don’t like people setting up an easel and painting in a library. It’s not what they’re doing Caitlin, it’s where they doing it.
Wonderful writing. We should all grow some wings.
I hope not black wings with ones and zeros. It’s a perfect description of a soulless, AI world.
Every once in a while I’m reminded of the girl I almost hit with my car who had blindly entered the crosswalk without looking up from her phone.
I like very much what Caitlin Johnstone described as how young people can use the web to really be educated, wider and kinder. I think the wings are in the girl’s mind as she escapes our limited educations. The fact that the young, like us, also use the web for narrowness, meanness and avoid seeing more, does not lessen what is good in what they are doing.
Clearing out the ‘old’ dead wood from your audience Caitlin?
Mission accomplished.
haha. She has lost this 1960’s radical old coot if there’s another piece like this in our future. I’m sick of this. It’s so pointless and destructive.
Oh no, you’re “sick of it” are you, you entitled loser.
Go and write something better and share your brilliance with the the world….
Caitlin shares her’s day after day, week after week.
Be sure to post a link to it here so we can watch you spread your wings and …
I’m not sure what Caitlin’s motive is. Does she really believe this, or is the whole piece a metaphor for what is wrong with the world? Some young people are very informed about what is really going on in the world, but many are not, or even worse are not even interested.
She’s desperate for her children to be “saved’. in her mind.
Except the deadwood is what will stay.
When the grid goes down and all the rare earth mining ceases this demon child will die of starvation. She lives as an alien and will die as one,too.
Wonderful writing. Thank you for your refreshing perspective. Also, I greatly appreciate your tendency to twist around the pieces you write, no matter the gravity of their topic, to end on optimistic note. Keep it up.
It is optimistic because she flew away.
What a great story!. So much truth in what you have written. Maybe the younger generations will help make this a better world. As an old-timer, I can freely admit that we have fucked things up in a large way. To add insult to injury we are now ignoring global warming.
My biggest wish is that the younger generation will go to the polls and vote out the old farts that runings things into the ground.
This is the finest piece of your writing I have ever read. It accomplishes so much in such a trim package, says so much about the past and the future, and the hard-wiring of planet Earth as an evolutionary process. I especially liked the leap into speculative fiction as she expands her giant black digital wings. There is only so far you can go with calling out the obvious failings of a crumbling empire, but with fictions you are absolutely free to speculate on the shape of the future. Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I hope to see phone girl again in future adventures.
Excellent.
And nice quote.
But I would say:
“You never change things by simply criticizing reality…
Tough it is a starting point.
I think it stinks and I hope never to have to see that girl again. The only system that should be made obsolete is capitalism.
Perhaps systems should be made obsolete. Big systems. Systems bigger than people are. When progress is the raison d”etre, subsistence becomes denigrated from an art.
Learning is good.
But learning without purpose or application is nothing.
Who needs a tree, or a forest, or even a Monet, when they have an iPhone securely modulated by plutocrat algorithms?
Really?
Good point. But I think the intent was to say that spending time on the internet is not neccesarily a complete waste and the young should not neccesarily feel they have to appologize for it.
Its how they use that time.
It can be artistic and educational an social.
Doesnt meen it can replace the smell of the forest.
But it might allow young to see good things and be inspired and motivativated.
But any time I am on the web I always end up with some Kardashians butt in my face. And it is hard not to follow that link.
Unfortunately forests are endangered and biology is threatened. Is this a good thing because living things eat other living things? I’ve pondered this but one thing I know for sure the monsters behind this new normal are evil and so are their plans.
The girl with the phone wasn’t in a forest. She was in a museum — a place that some have designated as holding objects worthy of reverence. She doesn’t believe fixating on objects of the distant past — that someone in authority said is important — are worth her attention. She’s deciding what is important to her.
A museum exists to display what many perceive as art. Not everyone has the same perceptions, of course. I’d say the old works of art are valuable if for no other reason than for the sake of historical information. What is that adage? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it? Something like that.
Frankly, I don’t know any old people who would speak to a young person in that way. Actually, I don’t even know any old people who are that critical of Internet use. Most of the old people I know are very much keyed into how wonderful the Internet is for communication and information that, you’re right, we never had such easy access to.
I think a better adversarial meme would be something like “The Comfortable and Complacent” vs. “The Inquisitive and Humble.”
This war against the old is so wrong, IMO. It would be better to take every opportunity to try to educate those who haven’t caught on yet because of years and years of propaganda bombardment. If they’re stubborn, keep trying. We really need “all hands on deck” and less quibbling amongst ourselves — ourselves being those who do not rank among the elite, powerful, and criminal.
I hear you. Same old shit.
exactly
Agreed
LOL
Rrminded me of the Matrix. However, even in the matrix things repeated again and again. Hope for a new dawning of mankind even as storm clouds threaten from afar. The story of the human condition.
Unlimited information, brought to you by Google. Only verified “correct” information allowed. Want to see a Monet? Let us do a racist check on him first.
I can only dream of how wonderful our world wide connections might be, if not for the Sociopaths In Charge controlling it all, and focusing our attention on division and fear. A potentially wonderful thing turned into a horrible weapon.
Right on. The Internet has many useful applications and I use it all the time. But surfing the net in a museum is an uncultured idiot’s game. It is a provocation and an insult to art and culture. Even Lenin and Trotsky knew better than to embrace “proletarian” art. The representation of reality throughout the generations is important to study. The girl in the fantasy is learning nothing of value by sitting in a museum and surfing the internet. She will remain ignorant no matter how much time she spends looking as the fat and ugly Kardashians.
Unfortunately everything online is controlled.
Sounds a bit like a futurist advert for man machine cyborg hybrid development. Schwab would approve whereas I’m extremely sceptical about heading that way.
She sounds like an angel from the TV series “Lucifer”. Magical thinking.
I don’t watch TV so I can’t really engage with your comment. Sorry.
I don’t even own a TV any more. Brainwashing machine.
Well, Caitlin: That’s certainly one way of looking at it – the iPhone, I mean – oh, and the black-winged Angel! Brilliant as always!
Oh boy. Another ageist rant. Way to hurt and divide people, Caitlin. Stereotypes don’t ever help describe a situation. They just divide people.
(This is the first piece of yours that I have read and disliked. No, hated. You should drop this pronto. It’s not helpful.)
I thought so too.
This was a response to her piece the other day on the ‘enlightened’ young that folks disagreed with….. another fairy tale.
I guess I missed that piece. I’ll look for it.
I really feel adamantly that this hatred toward the old is so misplaced. I’m told it’s just a meme and not meant to include all old people. Well…that’s just stupid. We need to take people as they are and be better than this. I’m so disappointed because I respect Johnstone more than almost any other writer. And, BTW, I’ll bet a very large portion of her audience is in their senior years and have been fighting the system for decades without benefit of the Internet to show that we’re not alone. We need to join hands and practice “strength in numbers.”
I’m very close to tuning out on writers/talkers who insist on demonizing entire groups of people.
it functions exactly as intended. Division to the inth.
This gaslighting POS is par example.
There are plenty of other sites
I am positive I shan’t be missed.
She’s desparate for her children to survive this insanity by stupidifying people over a certain age.
First time I have ever hated one of Caitlin’s pieces, too. Treating older people with disdain is a vast mistake against people of my generation. We were not little careerist conformists. We were trying to overturn capitalism. We still are. Anybody who refers to me as an “old lady” is asking for a smack in the chops.
@caitoz wasn’t talking about all older people – just the two in the story and people like them. Though if you identify with them, you might be one I guess.
If you refer to people as zombies, you can’t complain too much if they call you old lady!
I thought this was a good story and one that makes you think. I’m an old white guy, 78, and I wasn’t offended at all. Just look at our country and how it has fallen into the hands of the intellectually impaired. To list just a few ridiculous things – Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, pro-life supporters who openly carry guns.
This country has been lead by old white men long enough. We need a change in thinking – or at least some leaders who actually think. So let’s bring on the younger generations, women, minorities, and others with a different mindset. We need leaders who care about other people and do not think that every country that doesn’t agree with us is an enemy and needs to be invaded.
I agree. Some of the teenagers I know seem only interested in fashion or football, but others are concerned with the issues you mention – and they’re teamed up with like-minded youth from China, the USA, and wherever.
Some young(er) people can be so fcking stupid.
Old fools and young fools have one thing in common.
Look at these Idiotic conditions placed on the latest lockdown in Sydney Australia !
As an Australian who hasn’t watched TV in a decade and a half and observing this from Indonesia – well – I find it hysterical and saddening at the same time that Australians have been reduced to this intellectual level !
For anyone living in Greater Sydney (not including the four LGAs affected by stay-at-home-orders), the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains as well as the LGAs of Wollongong and Shellharbour:
Visitors to households will be limited to five guests, including children
Masks are compulsory in all indoor non-residential settings, including workplaces, gyms and at organised outdoor events, and on public transport
Drinking while standing at indoor venues is not be allowed
Singing by audiences at indoor shows or by member of the congregation at indoor places of worship is not allowed
Dancing is not allowed at indoor hospitality venues or nightclubs; however, dancing is allowed at weddings for the bridal party only (no more than 20 people)
Dance and gym classes limited to 20 per class (masks must be worn)
The one person per four-square-metre rule is in place for all indoor and outdoor settings, including weddings and funerals
Outdoor seated events will be limited to 50 per cent capacity
Previous public transport capacity limits, represented by green dots, will be reintroduced
Because Australia doesn’t have the NOVEL Coronavirus – they have the FLU – just like the US and the UK !!
When China discovered the virus – well – they discovered that it was a NEW coronavirus so they called it NOVEL – it is a Bio weapon developed in some US biolab – probably under the the direction of Fauci !!
I will tell you who DOES have the NOVEL coronavirus – IRAN – RUSSIA and CHINA !!
The very countries it was DESIGNED for !!
What prevented the novel coronavirus from spreading to the US, UK and Australia?
Travel has been shut down – forced quarantine for ANY Iranian – Chinese or Russian even if they were allowed to enter foreign countries – which they are NOT !
There may be a few cases – however there is a 99.6 % recovery rate even if you did acquire it !
FLU cases have completely disappeared in the WEST !
The Polymer Chain Reaction Test is a SCAM which amplifies molecules up to trillion times and can find something that hardly exists !
This is the element YOU are part of !!
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/israel-039-s-war-on-truth-paid-shills-and-trolls-underneath-your-comments_jgoAKQPkvwy3tCC.html
‘FLU cases have completely disappeared in the WEST !’
Doesn’t that somewhat contradict your previous comment, ‘Because Australia doesn’t have the NOVEL Coronavirus – they have the FLU – just like the US and the UK !!’?
No it doesn’t. Keep up Ian. He is saying they are re-branding the flu. I agree with him. A survival rate so high, with so few cases is not a pandemic. One case … lockdown. Insanity and very poor governance by the authorities. And you never vaccinate during a viral pandemic because whatever it is will just mutate around the vaccine. Health authorities know this … so why are they so desperate to get this jab into us?
Back to the rest home for you, Jack. A nice cuppa should do the trick.
A nice cuppa pine needle tea?
https://thetruthaboutvaccines.com/pine-needle-tea
Well said. I’d rather get the damned virus, which is probably just a bad flu year, get over it and be immune for life. This “vaccine”, whatever it actually is, doesn’t protect the recipient from anything. You have to be suspicious of why they are insisting everyone gets it.
wow…i LOVE this!!!
Me too!
Hey! That geryl with the iPhone does she know country do they have story song dance ….
The Earth dies screaming