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degringolade
Still think this is a cool picture
This turned out to be a bit of a disjointed ramble, but I don’t really feel like editing it. How to tell people to stop worrying about possible futures that you cannot control and cannot foresee is futile. Sorry about the ramble.
I live in an itty bitty apartment in an older, less cool small complex with a really good vibe. I am quite content here. But for quite a bit of my eight years here, I have had the experience of a crazy neighbor several times. It is quite enlightening. While living in an apartment is my preference, this is one of the “not-upside” parts of the overall experience.
For about two years, a young Palestinian (born in the US, but still identifies as Palestinian) lived to my right about five years ago. He would routinely march off to protests wherever they were being held that day. He would also spend time shouting “death to Israel” at random times (usually during the day on weekends). My only concession here was that I decided that my mezuzah would go up when he left (which took about a year).
Then there was the serious dope smoker who usually wore a t-shirt featuring Ted Kascinski and would, whenever we chatted, spend a great deal of energy explaining to me the mechanics of striking out against the man. However, he usually followed this up by smoking a lot of dope and then sleeping for a day or two. He did punch a lot of holes in walls and wrecked the fridge and dishwasher when he got evicted for non-payment of rent, but I tend to think that this wasn’t a political act.
The latest is doozy though. She claims to be a retired nurse practitioner. So far she has conveyed earnest and slightly panicked warnings about: (1) Port International Airport being closed down due to an impending attack on the United States by Kenyan terrorists; (2) The stock market crashing the next day and the CIA performing a coup d’etat with Trump being drugged and forced to do their bidding; and (3) The government on her tail because he father/uncle was heavily involved in the JFK assasination.
Where this is going is that it forces me to assess my sometimes less than mainstream ideation with a nod toward where I sure as hell don’t want to end up.
I was reading my favorite part of JMG’s online writing repertoire (Frugal Friday’s or FF). For the most part, it is a great nuts and bolts discussion of how to live cheap in a world where such seditious thoughts are very unwelcome by the mainstream of society (the mainstream concentrates on making more money and buying more shit).
Yesterday at FF the discussion went a just a little bit into the realm of the end-of-world-as-we-know-it. Essentially people began to discuss the means to communicate with folks of their ilk when the intrusiveness of the internet exceeds their tolerance or if the structure of the current means of communication becomes unavailable.
I think that this kind of thing, while valid, has to be approached carefully if one is going to go down that path. I am not certain that folks at FF won’t be offended by this statement, but it isn’t meant to be insulting, merely a caution that there be monsters there that can convince you to go farther than is necessary to deal with perceived and possibly imaginary problems.
I have been fighting back against my paranoia for years now. It has not really cost me anything that matters (though there are a bunch of 20 year old #10 cans of freeze dried food worth around a grand that are a bit of an embarrassment). Mostly it came down to understanding the now time-worn and unwelcome heresy of “indifferentism”.
Google n-gram chart for use of indifferentism
What the whole thing boils down to is the simple idea that the universe doesn’t really care about us. I suppose that coming around to this way of thinking over the past couple of years has colored my thoughts and values and made my way of thinking foreign to everyone around me and an extremely minor irritant to the folks who think that the world should run the way that they want to.
My latest crazy neighbor reminded me about the tolls that taking the world around you too seriously and expecting the world to conform with your quite parochial visions and prejudices leads. You start trying to figure out how to retain the things you have because the way things are seems to work well enough. Anything that threatens that little bit of comfort leads you down a path to those #10 cans if you aren’t careful.
The discussion at FF the other day led me to believe that little things like the discussion there are the first, tentative steps down that curious path. How do we maintain a system of communication among ourselves when the system starts hiccuping? Well buckaroos, I suppose we’ll figure it out when it comes to that. Trying to plan for the unknown failure of a system which isn’t fully understood and out of your control seems to be a fool's game.
A long time ago I chose the nom de plume of Degringolade. "Dégringolade" is a French noun that translates to a rapid decline or deterioration, or a downfall.
The #10 cans came about because of the mindset I was working with at the time. I had let myself get all worked up because the economy was looking pretty effing shaky and was raising two sons. I did end up losing my job in that so I spent time scrambling and ended up in a different financial bracket. The compromises that I made were always there (public school versus private school, lots of home cooking, etc, etc) but you adapt to the conditions.
The internet isn’t going away this week, it will probably be around for the remainder of the remainder of anyone’s lifetime who reads this. I think that you will be able to send e-mails well into the future. You will have to struggle along as the segment allotted to you starts looking more like usenet than facebook (text is super cheap to send in terms of money) but you won’t see as many pretty pictures or watch a talking head explain things from his point of view.
So the “options” presented in all earnestness in the discussion aren’t really all that realistic, MESh networksand packet HAM are technical and spotty and will probably never grow beyond the cadre of true believers that currently proselytize. Reversion to xerox’ed, staple newsletters are really expensive and the fate of the postal service is in question.
I don’t know what is coming for the means of wide area communication. Planning for a situation to keep what you have when the system that allowed what you have is vanishing is pretty much a waste of effort. All you can do is worry about it when the time comes and try to figure the work around if and when the shit hits the fan is all you can do.
Liked the long version better than the short one
Date: 2025-08-13 08:20 pm (UTC)Emily07
sums her up
Date: 2025-08-14 08:24 am (UTC)We have also had ridiculous pantries of 50-pound bags of this and that, which we always end up giving away when moving. Luckily, for the year before this last big move, we knew it was coming, so we let the food run out, mostly.
Folks do not know how to deal with frugality in a society that only sees its value in what it can buy.
Your little complex sounds a lot like my old one at The Diplomat Apartments in Tucson.