tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post7693539681625756854..comments2023-03-30T10:20:30.146-07:00Comments on Mary Tracy: A Moment of Brutal HonestyMary Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207819303495310169noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-31002487219702442242011-08-02T17:19:17.012-07:002011-08-02T17:19:17.012-07:00What you say is too true Mary! And one of my epip...What you say is too true Mary! And one of my epiphanies over the past couple years is that people don't really WANT to know about my difficulties. My definition of friendship used to be that we had to be able to talk about the things that were hard; and I ended up with no friends. I am more popular now that I am keeping my mouth shut and a smile on my face and my prescription for antidepressants filled. It is a sad but real fact, at least where I live.<br /><br />Everything you say is true, life is very hard for most people -- AND -- what I have been finding easier, paradoxically, is seeking out and finding the parts that are nice. No matter how small or insignificant. Waking up to sun coming in my window. A flower on a weed in a crack in the sidewalk. Things like that. <br /><br />I think part of it is what Michael said, that seemingly one day I woke up 40 years old and much more fatalistic -- there is a lot of bad out there, and not much any of us can do about it. I would love a better future for everyone, but I don't have a lot of hope left that it will happen, or much will left to resist mostly on my own. And it sounds weird, but that makes it easier to "do" politics differently, in a way, because it stops FEELING so much like life and death. It still IS, of course, but my experience of it is not so difficult and traumatizing.<br /><br />That's not meant, of course, as any kind of pablum for people who are truly in dire circumstances -- just that, for a lot of us who "do" politics, we do have the luxury to step back and say, wait, I'm not dying right this minute, there are some good things, some simple joys, maybe I can not torment myself so much, not spend every waking moment of my life focused on everyone else's traumas.<br /><br />Oh, and check out Zenni Optical, online eyeglasses for cheap (depending on your prescription). Made in China, so politically completely horrible, but for me it was the difference between paying $300 US which I didn't have, and $12.95 US (which included shipping).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-64136282778331369542011-08-01T01:58:17.595-07:002011-08-01T01:58:17.595-07:00Thanks Mary I really appreciate that. :)
Yep I do...Thanks Mary I really appreciate that. :)<br /><br />Yep I do feel like nobody cares what happens to me and I'm right! Well apart from my mother.<br />This world is so cruel that it is frightening sometimes. <br /><br />The thing about having no qualifications is it seems to make you somewhat expendable to society. People's attitude is "it's ok for him to live in the gutter in abject poverty because he is an uneducated bum", which people also associate with being lazy and feckless. At least when you have qualifications people see you as a full human being worthy of respect and decent treatment. <br /><br />I find it very frustrating because I feel like I was academically able when I was at school. Unfortunately I let being bullied, being a despised outcast and being a figure of ridicule interfere with my studies. I wish I'd known then what I know now, that the antidote to all that is success. When you are a success people hold you in high regard, want to be around you and want to be associated with you. Success also seems to wash away almost all sin, and many evil people benefit from that.<br /><br />I suspected you might have seen the movie "What a way to go" since you recommended a book by one of the people that was featured heavily in it.Robertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-81266379298476093372011-07-31T18:02:45.300-07:002011-07-31T18:02:45.300-07:00@ Robert
I'm so sorry to hear you're stru...@ Robert<br /><br />I'm so sorry to hear you're struggling. I can totally understand being on the "soon to be abolished Incapacity benefit" because of being "crazy". Someone very close to me is in that very same place. It is very difficult and demoralising. You feel like nobody cares what happens to you. The world is quick to condemn, but slow to lend a helping hand. <br />You say you have no qualifications, and I just wanted to say this: I have plenty of qualifications and I can't find a job that pays a damn. I know my situation is not like yours; I just wanted you to know that nowadays qualifications don't automatically guarantee anything. And none of it helps if you are "crazy" anyway!<br /><br />I have seen the movie "What a Way to Go". It was good, I should watch it again.Mary Tracyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07207819303495310169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-87856671087535306522011-07-31T17:57:57.550-07:002011-07-31T17:57:57.550-07:00@ Michael
Thank you for your kind words. I'm ...@ Michael<br /><br />Thank you for your kind words. I'm pretty sure 50 year old Mary Tracy will be much happier and wearing shawls.<br /><br />I don't entirely disagree with you. What I am trying to say is that we get most of our urge to make the world a better place when we want to stop the suffering of others. You hear story after story of people putting up with a lot until something happens to someone they care about: then they snap into action. <br /><br />So my theory is that if we all stayed true, showing others the good and the bad, we would build more empathy and the desire to improve our lot would burn far stronger.Mary Tracyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07207819303495310169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-5526751610481996952011-07-31T12:07:19.577-07:002011-07-31T12:07:19.577-07:00Great article Mary.
My name is Robert and I am al...Great article Mary.<br /><br />My name is Robert and I am also struggling, I'm on the soon to be abolished Incapacity benefit because I'm crazy, I'm black in deeply racist country and I have no qualifications, my future is of course bleak, I feel completely hopeless.<br /><br />Humanity is on a train heading for the edge of a cliff in my opinion and the driver at the front is criminally insane and is holding down the accelerator.<br /><br />The people who run the world are sociopathic addicts. They are completely addicted to the accumulation of wealth they don't need they can't stop and they wont stop. They own the media, which means they can fool most of the people most of the time, and they own and control the political parties too. <br /><br /><br />In addition to that humanity has pumped so much Co2 into the atmosphere and done so many other destructive things that the environment has started to collapse and will very likely reach a tipping point and then unravel quickly. The developing world will be decimated and famine will probably reach the "first world" in our lifetimes.<br /><br />We've also reached peak oil. "Oil discoveries peaked in 1964. US discoveries peaked in 1930, and 40 years later production peaked. We are now 44 years after the global discovery peak."<br /><br />"World production of conventional crude has been flat for the past four years, even as prices have increased by 140%." <br /><br />"Oil and gas are essential to modern farming. The most obvious use is to run the tractors and machines. Car drivers can switch to public transport, lorries can move their goods (partially, at least) to railways, but the only option for a tractor or combine harvester is a horse or an ox. Clearly modern agriculture could not switch to an animal-power-based system and hope to continue with modern yields. A tractor can plough in an hour an area that a horse would take a day to (0.9–1 hectare)."<br /><br />http://watd.wuthering-heights.co.uk/mainpages/agriculture.html<br /> <br /><br />"There does seem to be a consensus forming that last year's financial crash was precipitated by the spike in oil prices last summer, when oil briefly touched $147/bbl. Since most things in a fully developed, industrialised economy run on oil, it is not an optional purchase: for a given level of economic activity, a certain level of oil consumption is required, and so one simply pays the price for as long as access to credit is maintained, and after that suddenly it's game over. François Cellier has recently published an analysis in which he shows that at roughly $600/bbl the entire world's GDP would be required to pay for oil energy, leaving no money for putting it to any sort of interesting use. At that price level, we can't even afford to take delivery of it. In fact, at that price level, we can't even afford to pump it out of the ground.<br /><br />And so, the actual limiting price, beyond which no economic activity is possible, is certainly a lot lower, and last summer we seem to have experimentally established that to be around $150/bbl, which is something like 6% of global GDP. We may never run out of oil, but we have already run out of money with which to buy it, at least once, and will most likely do so again and again, until we learn the lesson."<br /><br />http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/06/definancialisation-deglobalisation.html<br /><br /><br />So the global economy is on the verge of collapse and the end of the industrial age is imminent.<br /><br />With all these different catastrophes converging on us at once, I believe that we are in short fucked.<br /><br />I found out all this stuff by accident when I stumbled across this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o on you tube.Robertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7141261450326223185.post-83850948869043247042011-07-31T04:24:58.851-07:002011-07-31T04:24:58.851-07:00As always, I love your writing. You're on the ...As always, I love your writing. You're on the other side of the world from me, in more ways than one (about 4, that I can think of). But you have a realness that I haven't seen much of, since I've been reading radical blogs. I wish I could meet a 50 year old Mary Tracy one day, to find that you'd found ways to be genuinely happy while still keeping real. <br /><br />For many people, the reason that they get happier as they get older is that they get better at it (living) - better at connecting to their spiritual self, better at interpreting things in optimistic ways rather than "catastrophising", and better at being realistic about what they can change, and accepting the things they can't. And caring for others. And examining their own life. And delaying gratification to focus on the longer term. And understanding and accepting the realities of others. And engaging with activities, groups and individuals which have real ongoing meaning to them. And ....<br />Michael BiggsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com