I assume that the first picture below is the 7 y/o selling lottery tickets? It is sad to see someone so young already shackled to a task in order to help her family get by.
There is a lot of truth to your observation that "online emoting often triggers snarkiness or anger, but face to face conversations routinely induce mirth." Body language, hand movements, facial expression, tone of voice, even the emphasis placed on words and the hesitations introduced into speech all communicate in a way that is impossible to duplicate on-line. And that is why the "virtual life" the elites want us to embrace will never adequately replace the old-fashioned manner of human relations.
I think there is some truth to the Buddhist monk’s belief in the power of funny stories to heal. Positivity is important not just for yourself, but for those around you. I spent the last decade of my working life as a supervisor, but only after retirement did I realize that one of a leader’s most important but difficult duties is exuding positivity even when he feels like complaining. My occasional inability to pull this off is what made me only a middling supervisor. Negativity is infectious, and after all, complaining is at its root a confession of one’s powerlessness.
The rising number of lottery ticket sellers is certainly one indicator of the state of public prosperity or the lack of it. Here I see the rising number of lottery ticket BUYERS similarly, and it is also instructive to see who they are.
Not long ago, we drove past a rather rumpled woman of indeterminate age panhandling in the median of a freeway on/off-ramp, with the now-increasingly-common “anything helps” cardboard sign. To me it did not seem like a very good place for accepting handouts, since only one car will stop nearby, and only if the light is red. Better to stand next to a stop sign, where every car has to stop. In our case, the light was green when we arrived at the intersection, and stopping wasn’t an option since it would back up traffic exiting the freeway behind us.
We went on to our errand in the nearby grocery store, and sometime later, on our way out, we passed the lottery ticket vending machine. Lo and behold, standing in front of it, pulling crumpled dollar bills out of her pocket and buying lottery tickets, was the same woman we had seen on the freeway off-ramp. The first impulse of someone who had given her something might be anger or irritation. But then perhaps one is forced to recognize that the despair of many has reached the point that they believe a lucky “lightning strike” is their only hope of salvation.
When expressing anger they do not seem to have the capacity to identify who is actually feeding their destitution, and they get angry at the average Joe, mainly because the average Joe is more likely to engage with them.
When they get mad at me I say, "All you get together walk through town and set the banks, real estate offices, insurance and stock brokers... all on fire!"
Then they get really angry when I say, "you give the rich the pass because you want to be just like them. The Palestinians are fighting for their lives, why not you?"
The homeless have nothing left to lose. I am hoping that they go for broke.
I'm encouraging them.
Because, in the end, we are ALL being treated like Palestinians.
It's mean spirited, selfish and scapegoat-ish. (Childish?)
What got my ire was these 4 panhandlers sitting in front of a bank, getting angry at me because I didn't put $$ into their yogourt container telling me that I don't care.
They know who I am. They know I run the only bike shop that will deal with their needs.
It's depressing to see on the pink jacketed little girl's face. A seven year old is meant to wear a permanent smile, not an expression of trepidation made all the more heart wrenching by seeing her fingers intertwined in unconscious supplication.
Care giving of senile or crippled old Europeans and Americans is a booming industry - offering employment in the first world to those from the third world. I know several people, some of whom are as old as 80, taking care of elderly cripples who are sometimes younger than they are. The care givers are often Europeans from in-between countries like South Africa which is testament to that country's collapsing currency (and infrastructure).
Decrepit old age seems far removed at the moment, but it's astonishing how quickly it'll creep up. Cast your mind back 20 years - it seems like yesterday. But looking forward 20 years seems like an age. It won't be - it'll pass even more quickly than the last 20 years did (a phenomenon caused by a year becoming an ever decreasing proportion of our life as we age).
We all need to plan for our dotage but most never do. There are a few options: 1) stay fit and healthy enough to look after yourself until you die, 2) have sufficient money to pay someone to look after you as you become frail, 3) take yourself off into the countryside at a time of your choosing, lie down and wait until thirst sends you off.
I've been very familiar with 90+ year olds who've stayed fit and healthy and known a couple of people who've taken the third option. However most have taken the second route - looked after either by family, frail care or a helper in a third world country they've moved to. The sad fact of modern life is that, with so few modern couples having children, the surviving partner is unlikely to have family to turn to and will spend their final years in the company of strangers.
Man,being sixty must suck,all these thoughts of death.Me,I got me a cool five weeks until then.I smoke and drink as much as possible,while avoiding any exercise at all.
Chinese Chuang-Zi:How do you know the dead do not regret having clung to life so much?
Silly me, I thought General Uprising was an old guy in the Vietnamese army reserves. I don't need to buy a mouse; I've got them running through my room late at night. It's the big rat in the kitchen downstairs that scares me. The other night I asked him, "how the hell did you get in here?!" "Me?!" He said. "No. How did YOU get in here?" As Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "I don't get no respect..."
Now I'm talking to vermin. One might wonder, "What the hell are you drinking, Tom???"
It is inhumanly cold here in Connecticut. How did I grow up in this environment? I miss the tropical warmth of the Philippines. And the old guy who lived on the beach in a sort of tree house he had built in a palm tree. It was a sturdy structure; presumably he had been living there for months if not years. The authorities did not bother him, fine him or arrest him. He was there when I arrived and he was there when I departed. Perhaps if I go back he will still be there. Maybe he will remember me? Like virtually all Filipinos he spoke English .
I admired him because he was smart enough to have figured out how to live without paying rent. You can't do that in the good, ol' U.S. If you don't pay rent in the U.S. you're "homeless" and if you're homeless you are sub-human. Less than a dog. Believe me, I know.
My hotel, much to my chagrined disappointment, had no ice machine! I wondered about that for a while. Maybe people don't want to drink the local water or ice made from the local water? I drank the water and it never bothered me. Unlike the water in north west Mexico (essentially a desert) which is vile tasting. I think it may have been desalinated sea water. One has to buy bottled water there. Fortunately there was an ice making business right next to my hotel (in the Philippines, not Mexico) where I could buy "tube" ice (that is potable, safe to drink) for 17 pesos, about 30 U.S cents. I always said "salimat" to the young guy who gave me the ice. That is "thank you." He seemed to appreciate that or maybe he was just being polite?
As far as I could see all the occupants of the hotel I stayed at were from other parts of the Philippines or south east Asia. Talking to an Irish ex-pat one day downtown he gave me the distinct impression that the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) white men should be staying in the expensive hotels downtown. Why? I thought. Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars when I can stay on the beach for a few U.S. dollars a night? Well, there were those annoying packs of dogs....
In the US, more people are being cremated because cost of a burial plus plot have become out of reach. (Reach, though, is probably not the right verb for such a move downward.) Anyway, the Vietnamese used to bury family members in the middle of their rice paddies. Now that most no longer work the land, they must buy plots to inter loved ones, so guess what? Cremation has become a new trend in Vietnam!
When you're winding down, such thoughts occur, but, like you said, I'll keep sharing...
I once read that in a county in Asia (don't remember which one) they take their dead ones and place them out in the open countryside somewhere and the buzzards come and feast on them.
To me, that is the best way to take care of the deceased bodies. Feed the wildlife and don't consume any resources in order to take care of the body. Of course, with materialism ruling society, they can't allow any process that doesn't cost money.
Yes. That was the religion of Zoroastrianism in ancient Persia. Now Iran. The dead were put in trees. That was centuries before Islam came to the region.
You make an interesting point. The whole funeral business is making money by transferring money from the bereaved to the funeral parlor.
I imagine when my time is up I will be thrown in an unmarked pauper's grave. Better I give the small amount of money I have to a worthwhile charity than to a funeral director.
There's a 1958 Japanese film worth checking out. The Ballad of Narayama is about villagers carrying their aging relatives to a mountain, where they're left to die. I'm assuming it's based on an actual practice somewhere.
Japanese films are the very best. Gate of Hell is one of several. I can't remember the names of others but they have beautiful colors, fine acting, and are rich with meaning.
Thank you, Thomas, for the further information--that it was Iran and the religion of Zoroastrianism. Plus, interesting that they put them in trees.
And not only the funeral parlor, all the trees that are cut up for the coffin, plus the metal attachment parts, and the rest of what goes with the coffin. All that waste just to be buried under ground.
And that's not all that money is wasted on just to commemorate one's passing. The ones that pass are the lucky ones. They get to exit this burdensome living realm, which the Creator most likely provided as punishment for what may have been past wrongs done by the World's inhabitants.
I'm afraid you've got me started down the rabbit hole.
You might be interested in reading about Dr. Donald Hoffman of the University of California Irvine and his hypothesis about the constraints of this four dimensional realm we are temporarily in. He asserts we are living in a matrix of space-time that is a sort of temporary dream world of sorts. When we die we wake up to the real world.
There is an increasing body of information -- one may make of it what one will -- that a fundamental mistake we have made about the universe is to think that it is material at its essence. This new information hypothesis is that the universe is actually consciousness and that we are all individual manifestations of that consciousness. We are temporarily experiencing existence in the temporal realm before returning to the fundamental nature of the universe which is pure consciousness.
The late Michael Talbot authored a book, The Holographic Universe, about this.
I know it all sounds very strange. I am still trying to research the hypothesis and understand it. All I can say at this point is there is a considerable body of evidence supporting this. Perhaps there is something in the human psyche that promotes this sort of speculation; or perhaps there is some kernel of truth to it? I don't know at this point.
Yes, and it's only beginning. Vietnamese factories don't get enough orders from overseas, and fewer tourists are coming. Vietnam's idiotic visa laws don't help, but the main reason is that rich countries are getting poorer. Just look at what's happening in Germany.
whats happening in Germany is Russia and russia is unavoidable even tho' you think like Ussay, the woerld has made its foolish choices, the woerld will pay for them. It isn't personal. Its catastrophic.
I assume that the first picture below is the 7 y/o selling lottery tickets? It is sad to see someone so young already shackled to a task in order to help her family get by.
There is a lot of truth to your observation that "online emoting often triggers snarkiness or anger, but face to face conversations routinely induce mirth." Body language, hand movements, facial expression, tone of voice, even the emphasis placed on words and the hesitations introduced into speech all communicate in a way that is impossible to duplicate on-line. And that is why the "virtual life" the elites want us to embrace will never adequately replace the old-fashioned manner of human relations.
I think there is some truth to the Buddhist monk’s belief in the power of funny stories to heal. Positivity is important not just for yourself, but for those around you. I spent the last decade of my working life as a supervisor, but only after retirement did I realize that one of a leader’s most important but difficult duties is exuding positivity even when he feels like complaining. My occasional inability to pull this off is what made me only a middling supervisor. Negativity is infectious, and after all, complaining is at its root a confession of one’s powerlessness.
The rising number of lottery ticket sellers is certainly one indicator of the state of public prosperity or the lack of it. Here I see the rising number of lottery ticket BUYERS similarly, and it is also instructive to see who they are.
Not long ago, we drove past a rather rumpled woman of indeterminate age panhandling in the median of a freeway on/off-ramp, with the now-increasingly-common “anything helps” cardboard sign. To me it did not seem like a very good place for accepting handouts, since only one car will stop nearby, and only if the light is red. Better to stand next to a stop sign, where every car has to stop. In our case, the light was green when we arrived at the intersection, and stopping wasn’t an option since it would back up traffic exiting the freeway behind us.
We went on to our errand in the nearby grocery store, and sometime later, on our way out, we passed the lottery ticket vending machine. Lo and behold, standing in front of it, pulling crumpled dollar bills out of her pocket and buying lottery tickets, was the same woman we had seen on the freeway off-ramp. The first impulse of someone who had given her something might be anger or irritation. But then perhaps one is forced to recognize that the despair of many has reached the point that they believe a lucky “lightning strike” is their only hope of salvation.
The panhandlers/homeless are stuck in a cycle;
despair>grovel> reward>celebrate>reality>despair>(REPEAT)...
When expressing anger they do not seem to have the capacity to identify who is actually feeding their destitution, and they get angry at the average Joe, mainly because the average Joe is more likely to engage with them.
When they get mad at me I say, "All you get together walk through town and set the banks, real estate offices, insurance and stock brokers... all on fire!"
Then they get really angry when I say, "you give the rich the pass because you want to be just like them. The Palestinians are fighting for their lives, why not you?"
The homeless have nothing left to lose. I am hoping that they go for broke.
I'm encouraging them.
Because, in the end, we are ALL being treated like Palestinians.
I reread this.
It's mean spirited, selfish and scapegoat-ish. (Childish?)
What got my ire was these 4 panhandlers sitting in front of a bank, getting angry at me because I didn't put $$ into their yogourt container telling me that I don't care.
They know who I am. They know I run the only bike shop that will deal with their needs.
Most often, for nothing.
Brilliant observation, JPB. You are in Linh's league.
It's depressing to see on the pink jacketed little girl's face. A seven year old is meant to wear a permanent smile, not an expression of trepidation made all the more heart wrenching by seeing her fingers intertwined in unconscious supplication.
Care giving of senile or crippled old Europeans and Americans is a booming industry - offering employment in the first world to those from the third world. I know several people, some of whom are as old as 80, taking care of elderly cripples who are sometimes younger than they are. The care givers are often Europeans from in-between countries like South Africa which is testament to that country's collapsing currency (and infrastructure).
Decrepit old age seems far removed at the moment, but it's astonishing how quickly it'll creep up. Cast your mind back 20 years - it seems like yesterday. But looking forward 20 years seems like an age. It won't be - it'll pass even more quickly than the last 20 years did (a phenomenon caused by a year becoming an ever decreasing proportion of our life as we age).
We all need to plan for our dotage but most never do. There are a few options: 1) stay fit and healthy enough to look after yourself until you die, 2) have sufficient money to pay someone to look after you as you become frail, 3) take yourself off into the countryside at a time of your choosing, lie down and wait until thirst sends you off.
I've been very familiar with 90+ year olds who've stayed fit and healthy and known a couple of people who've taken the third option. However most have taken the second route - looked after either by family, frail care or a helper in a third world country they've moved to. The sad fact of modern life is that, with so few modern couples having children, the surviving partner is unlikely to have family to turn to and will spend their final years in the company of strangers.
Man,being sixty must suck,all these thoughts of death.Me,I got me a cool five weeks until then.I smoke and drink as much as possible,while avoiding any exercise at all.
Chinese Chuang-Zi:How do you know the dead do not regret having clung to life so much?
Silly me, I thought General Uprising was an old guy in the Vietnamese army reserves. I don't need to buy a mouse; I've got them running through my room late at night. It's the big rat in the kitchen downstairs that scares me. The other night I asked him, "how the hell did you get in here?!" "Me?!" He said. "No. How did YOU get in here?" As Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "I don't get no respect..."
Now I'm talking to vermin. One might wonder, "What the hell are you drinking, Tom???"
It is inhumanly cold here in Connecticut. How did I grow up in this environment? I miss the tropical warmth of the Philippines. And the old guy who lived on the beach in a sort of tree house he had built in a palm tree. It was a sturdy structure; presumably he had been living there for months if not years. The authorities did not bother him, fine him or arrest him. He was there when I arrived and he was there when I departed. Perhaps if I go back he will still be there. Maybe he will remember me? Like virtually all Filipinos he spoke English .
I admired him because he was smart enough to have figured out how to live without paying rent. You can't do that in the good, ol' U.S. If you don't pay rent in the U.S. you're "homeless" and if you're homeless you are sub-human. Less than a dog. Believe me, I know.
My hotel, much to my chagrined disappointment, had no ice machine! I wondered about that for a while. Maybe people don't want to drink the local water or ice made from the local water? I drank the water and it never bothered me. Unlike the water in north west Mexico (essentially a desert) which is vile tasting. I think it may have been desalinated sea water. One has to buy bottled water there. Fortunately there was an ice making business right next to my hotel (in the Philippines, not Mexico) where I could buy "tube" ice (that is potable, safe to drink) for 17 pesos, about 30 U.S cents. I always said "salimat" to the young guy who gave me the ice. That is "thank you." He seemed to appreciate that or maybe he was just being polite?
As far as I could see all the occupants of the hotel I stayed at were from other parts of the Philippines or south east Asia. Talking to an Irish ex-pat one day downtown he gave me the distinct impression that the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) white men should be staying in the expensive hotels downtown. Why? I thought. Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars when I can stay on the beach for a few U.S. dollars a night? Well, there were those annoying packs of dogs....
you are tired, but can still share. Too good. I look forward to your 'reports' from the front line of 'life'. Enjoy forever...
g.
Hi grape,
In the US, more people are being cremated because cost of a burial plus plot have become out of reach. (Reach, though, is probably not the right verb for such a move downward.) Anyway, the Vietnamese used to bury family members in the middle of their rice paddies. Now that most no longer work the land, they must buy plots to inter loved ones, so guess what? Cremation has become a new trend in Vietnam!
When you're winding down, such thoughts occur, but, like you said, I'll keep sharing...
Linh
Granny makes good fertilizer. Who would'a thunk?
I once read that in a county in Asia (don't remember which one) they take their dead ones and place them out in the open countryside somewhere and the buzzards come and feast on them.
To me, that is the best way to take care of the deceased bodies. Feed the wildlife and don't consume any resources in order to take care of the body. Of course, with materialism ruling society, they can't allow any process that doesn't cost money.
Yes. That was the religion of Zoroastrianism in ancient Persia. Now Iran. The dead were put in trees. That was centuries before Islam came to the region.
You make an interesting point. The whole funeral business is making money by transferring money from the bereaved to the funeral parlor.
I imagine when my time is up I will be thrown in an unmarked pauper's grave. Better I give the small amount of money I have to a worthwhile charity than to a funeral director.
Hi Tom and Elaine,
There's a 1958 Japanese film worth checking out. The Ballad of Narayama is about villagers carrying their aging relatives to a mountain, where they're left to die. I'm assuming it's based on an actual practice somewhere.
Linh
Hi Linh,
Japanese films are the very best. Gate of Hell is one of several. I can't remember the names of others but they have beautiful colors, fine acting, and are rich with meaning.
Thank you, Thomas, for the further information--that it was Iran and the religion of Zoroastrianism. Plus, interesting that they put them in trees.
And not only the funeral parlor, all the trees that are cut up for the coffin, plus the metal attachment parts, and the rest of what goes with the coffin. All that waste just to be buried under ground.
And that's not all that money is wasted on just to commemorate one's passing. The ones that pass are the lucky ones. They get to exit this burdensome living realm, which the Creator most likely provided as punishment for what may have been past wrongs done by the World's inhabitants.
Hi Elaine,
I'm afraid you've got me started down the rabbit hole.
You might be interested in reading about Dr. Donald Hoffman of the University of California Irvine and his hypothesis about the constraints of this four dimensional realm we are temporarily in. He asserts we are living in a matrix of space-time that is a sort of temporary dream world of sorts. When we die we wake up to the real world.
There is an increasing body of information -- one may make of it what one will -- that a fundamental mistake we have made about the universe is to think that it is material at its essence. This new information hypothesis is that the universe is actually consciousness and that we are all individual manifestations of that consciousness. We are temporarily experiencing existence in the temporal realm before returning to the fundamental nature of the universe which is pure consciousness.
The late Michael Talbot authored a book, The Holographic Universe, about this.
I know it all sounds very strange. I am still trying to research the hypothesis and understand it. All I can say at this point is there is a considerable body of evidence supporting this. Perhaps there is something in the human psyche that promotes this sort of speculation; or perhaps there is some kernel of truth to it? I don't know at this point.
FWIW, I always found it amusing that Đồng Khởi street in Saigon is one of the most posh streets downtown.
Đồng Khởi meaning, as you put in the title, "General Uprising" - referring to a rural Communist uprising, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%E1%BB%93ng_Kh%E1%BB%9Fi_Movement
Now I'm really curious to read Vương Hồng Sển.
Should you make a translation of one of his books, you'll have at least one buyer.
So hard economic times in Viet Nam, too?
Hi Peggy,
Yes, and it's only beginning. Vietnamese factories don't get enough orders from overseas, and fewer tourists are coming. Vietnam's idiotic visa laws don't help, but the main reason is that rich countries are getting poorer. Just look at what's happening in Germany.
Linh
whats happening in Germany is Russia and russia is unavoidable even tho' you think like Ussay, the woerld has made its foolish choices, the woerld will pay for them. It isn't personal. Its catastrophic.
Good comment!