So it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and I am super drunk and high, having just hung out with my sister and her partner, the Black Rock Star, for his 28th birthday. He and I went to Busters down the street after she went to bed. They have a great selection of beer.
We sat at the bar, watching highlights of the NBA playoffs, Dr Shaq in scubba gear and an immense amount of fine fabric, some goofy skit with someone else on the ESPN stage, fishing, weirdly, while the guy who used to work for the Geek Squad sitting next to us, showed us a video on his phone that had better sound than the TV, of Andy Samberg rapping about a boat, that had about 70 million hits, (about 69,975,000 more than this blog has ever had.)
I found myself tending toward a negative appraisal of just about everything, though I wasn't a total grump. I spoke with the Black Rock Star awhile, talking with him about business finance, as I have managed two and run one. His goal of late is to run a hot dog cart. He is very earnest about it. It is astounding, how earnest, if you are familiar at all with the catalog of his music.
Then I road my bike home, and puked once on the way, and then again on my sidewalk, and then twice, maybe three times in my kitchen compost. And then I puffed, and then I read a criticism of my novel, and then I began to think about the economy, as if I am not always mindful of the economy, and then all the nuclear material scattered everywhere, and all the off-shore oil wells, and I thought, they maintain the economy, but the economy maintains them, and if the economy falters, then what is to maintain those facilities?
I thought about Denmark, with almost no natural resources, evaporating the material of the earth, the wealth of the body that sustains us, how we all churn through it so blindly, everywhere, and I wonder, what is to prevent Humanity, from burning and moldering in massive piles the wealth of the earth, until there can only be but a fraction of the economy? And in doing so, in collapsing, also letting oil facilities cover the seas with oil, in combination with nuclear facilities, killing most of the life on earth?
Sometimes I think there is a demonic energy loose upon the earth, blinding the vast majority of us to the fate that potentially awaits us. Having said all that, I sort of wonder, what is the point of blogging anymore?
I suppose when I sober up, I'll let it go mostly, and go about my life as I do, every day forward.
7 comments:
I know what you mean about blogging, and I'm sober...haven't even had coffee yet.
For the last couple of months I haven't even been reading blogs much, or doing anything else online short of checking in on the bank account. I don't get many emails these days seeing as how I don't work for the Matrix any longer. I went to California for two weeks last recently and came home to 45 emails. Of those emails five of them were emails I actually needed to read.
My point is that I have thought about completely disengaging from the internet because I'm basically already there. Deleting my FB account is what will enable me to do that if I chose to. I did that a little over a year ago.
Pretty much all I do now on the internet is read a few blogs and check the weather. I use spotify everyday because I love that it's a virtual jukebox featuring whole albums of just about everything. What I mean by disengaging is no longer reading blogs or checking collapsenet headlines. Put simply I use the internet for my news source and music.
I'm sure it was the substances in despair about the point of you writing a blog. I consider you a friend, but one that I have never met and never will meet. What sort of a place does that have? Our avatars our friends. If you were to never blog again I would wonder what happened to you a few times when reminded for whatever reason while looking at the blogs I follow. Then nothing.
I check my stats on blogger. Why? What does it matter? It's not going to help my garden grow, and it's not going to give me hands on experience with the goal of growing food. The internet is an amazing source of information, a miracle damn near, but where "social" comes in is where I don't want to have anything to do with it...at least I lean that way with few exceptions...you being one that I can think of.
I value hearing what you have to say and what you are thinking about. I also value knowing that when I blog you will most likely read. If it helps give your blog any more purpose, I'm pretty sure i've picked up some followers via commenting on your blog. However what we need is real people with similar interest and of like minds where we are at in reality and not on the internet.
So to answer your question about the point of blogging...from where I sit there isn't one. At least not a good one. I mean you could argue that you can change peoples minds via blogging, alter what they ultimately believe and will become. And that is true. However, there is some sadness in that truth. That sadness comes from the complete lack of culture in our society. We are so fucked up that we have to find friendships via avatars of people we will never meet. We feel the need to carry on back and forth in virtual land rather than at the pub, or coffee shop. We have very few spaces to meet other people in real life where the point is not consumption.
However, after having said all of that, I definitely want to continue having your voice influence mine via blogging. If you were to quit blogging...I'm sure I'd be close behind you cause as far as keeping a blog up myself...at this point I could take it or leave it.
I basically concur with lucid... I would definitely miss you guys if you stopped blogging. I pretty much avoid all news as much as possible, just catching little blurbs on the radio when I'm driving in my car amd whatever filters into the blogs I follow. I'm spending far less time reading blogs now that I can be out in my garden, and I chose to publish an entry once a week as both a limit and a goal.
I agree that it is sad that we have to resort to the virtual world to find people with similar viewpoints. I do cultivate real life friendships as much as possible, but for even most of the greenest of my friends, "peak oil" is a completely alien concept. Reading the blogs of other people who "get it" really helps keeping me from despair, and I write my blog for my future self for when I do despair. If anyone else reads my entries, that's great, but I don't really care.
That said, I've already started on my final entry. I've tentatively dated it for 9/11/2016. We'll see if I run out of things to say before then or if I push that back.
Nah, don't give it up just yet. I was having the same ideas last week and said so in the comments section on the Archdruid Report. JMG straightened me out on that one, pointing out that every day hundreds of new people turn up in the Peak Oil blogosphere, wide eyed and open minded.
Although it's impossible to know what effect your online actions have in the realm of the real world, it's still a very useful thing to do. Think of it as a public service.
My own blog, I predict, will gradually return to the earth - meaning it will be less and less about abstract ideas and things happening in the news, and more about my latest experiments making charcoal.
BTW I was reading an article yesterday about a man who made a great online friend through a cricket forum. They traded comments for years and then, last week, his 'friend' - who he had never met - suddenly died.
Interesting to read about the dilemma of whether to attend this guy's funeral. Was he a real friend or just some pixels on a screen?
There's a thought.
I think of you guys as friends, and would mourn lost contact as I would any friend.
William,
The internet is a circus to keep people who have phony baloney jobs occupied and give disaffected people the illusion of meaningful action (mad about global warming? start a blog!) You gave up your baloney, no surprise you are finding this diversion less and less ... interesting.
I hope you keep the blog going, I hope you ALL keep your blogs going. Some community, even if it is virtual, is better than no community. I think of you as a friend, you share my values, which sadly, is a rarity in my real life.
One of my major goals right now is to 'Find the Others' and hopefully I'll be able to do so and join a like-minded community. But until I do, at least I've found them online, which is something.
Something indeed, at 5:55.
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