Musing

[degringolade]

 

Expressionism / Abraham Manievich/ Late Summer Afternoon (The Bronx)

I think that one of the hard parts of being retired is the relative lack of direction and the absence of the idea that you are good at something and are recognized.  Truth be told, when you retire and go into the genteel (or not so genteel) seclusion that is inherent in the act, your self-identity is left high and dry on its own.  It takes a while to rebuild the edifice and it appears that a lot of times it is left lacking.

Now, the folks who do the best at retirement seem to be those folks who sold out to the system and raked in the nickels despite the loathing they had for their situation during their working years.  When they retired, they had the best chance of just putting the nonsense of status and monetary dick-matching behind them.

But filling up the hours with self-directed and self-centered activities is not for everyone.  I suppose that is why I spend so much time pecking away at a keyboard.  I am fully aware that my scribblings here are not the font of wisdom that I wish them to be.  On those rare (ish) occasions that I go back and re-read my past writings, many times I cringe on how fatuous the ideas were.

I suppose that is why I keep my ideas short and sweet and I am working on a fantasy novel that will probably never be published except on the ephemera of the internet.  Writing gives me a chance to carve out a couple of hours every day and fill them with something that proves that I am not completely brain-dead yet (although others may well contest this point)

What I am struggling with personally is that the worldview and the postulates that served me so well in the workaday world are increasingly less important and inapplicable to my life.  It doesn’t help that the world is using those worldviews and postualates in a manner that is destructive and almost immoral.  In a sense, I am partly responsible for this, I was one of the mops and buckets in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which so uniquely describes the world today.  

I suppose that the idea that one’s working days were fraught with such moral ambiguity should cause distress.  But, that would be assigning myself a greater role in the problem than is appropriate.  The only guilt that I have is that I had to wait until the time that I had the leisure to recognize my mistakes was at a point when it was too late to do anything about it.  

I think that my approach is going to be to explore the paths of knowledge/understanding that were rejected or repressed in the past.  I have made this choice for several reasons.  The first and most obvious is that I am not an original thinker.  I am good at taking someone else’s idea and wringing it out, but original thought is definitely not my forte.

The second is more subtle and distasteful to most.  By looking back at discarded ideas and ways that were spurned by our forebears, I will be acknowledging all the repression and deliberate ignorance of ideas that didn’t conform to our currently fashionable worldview.  

We are living in a world that is deliberately materialist.  If it cannot be measured, it doesn’t exist.  Even if it can be measured, if the results don’t conform to a top-down imposition of “truth” then it is usually savaged for the benefit of those who are currently at the top of the truth “pyramid”.

I suppose that what I am doing is cheerfully biting the hand that fed me.  

But, the cold truth of the matter is that when you look at where we stand and what is looking to be the nature of the world ahead, the hand that fed us for so long really doesn’t have the ability to fix the problem.  It strikes me that the worldviews and technologies that got us here aren’t going to be the ones that get us out of the mess we are in.

Comments

Looney Tunes taught me everything I know

[chefxh]

Dunno why that last paragraph makes me remember Daffy Duck atop the genie's treasure, scrabbling to cover it with his coat, screaming "Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!"

Re: Looney Tunes taught me everything I know

[degringolade]

Hey...you doing alright?

Loony Tunes was some of the best education that I had. Agreed.

I think that folks have always been greedy to a point. We have just allowed it (nay encouraged it) to the point that it is a flaw.

Keep on writing

[(Anonymous)]

ok saw that jmg wrote this week on ecosophia that it is more creative to create your own world setting then copying some other author's ideas and settings1. I thought of you and knew you are right to do what you are doing! so please keep writng,I miss your talent
OLfromNC