Until recently, I never understood people that romanticize high school. My high school experience wasn't bad at all, but the ensuing decades were significantly better. Why would I want to go back?
But I kind of get it now. How's this for privilege: until COVID, my life generally improved year after year. Nothing is linear, of course, but the general trend was up. Now I look back at 2019 with a melancholy wistfulness that I believe is called "nostalgia."
I don't actually want to return to 2019, not really. I'd be living in a web of lies, and this time I'd be aware of it; I don't think my mind can withstand that much cognative dissonance. But the blend of security and possibility that 2019 held - I miss that. Part of aging, I suppose, is reckoning with the reality that at some point that secure station with seemingly endless future possibilities - that home - isn't coming back.
The truth will set you free, it's said, and I believe it. But what goes unsaid is that once free there are only a few paths worth taking, and none of them lead backwards. And so we travel onward, knowing we can't recreate what we've lost, but with a growing determination to make the most of the path we're on.
Thank you for your piece - I always appreciate a good reflection that prompts me to do the same.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There's a palpable, nationwide loss of optimism about the future; it was on life support after the Bush Administration, and now the scamdemic and the Brandon Administration have finally driven a stake through its heart. Everyone knows now that things are not going to get better before they get a whole lot worse, but nobody knows when the bottom will drop out or how things will play out once it does. Michael Anton wrote an excellent obituary for the American constitutional republic (https://compactmag.com/article/the-pessimistic-case-for-the-future), and it's practically impossible to make the case that he exaggerated the state of America's terminal decline. So there's no way out but through! Might as well make the most of it, since we have to take the ride anyway, and prepare to make a go of it on the other side of all this.
I and many of my friends refer to ourselves as "refugees", and only half in jest. We grew up in different parts of the country, but we all agree that the places we remember from the past are dead and gone. There was nothing left for us in those places. It's a difficult adjustment to make, and, for a while, you really feel like a man out of both time and space, but thankfully, as you said, there are other expats, and I was fortunate to meet a lot of them, and they continue to come at pace.
You're right about home not needing to be perfect to be homesick for it. I was raised in the most cookie-cutter, soulless suburb imaginable. It was the quintessential place to buy in and sell out, as they say. The most culture we had were chain restaurants and groups of bored, schlubby middle-aged dads that would get together, dust off their instruments, and play old Boomer rock staples at the local watering holes on Friday nights. It was a decent place to grow up, but I lived there in my early twenties and couldn't have resented it more. For a young person, unmarried and unattached, it couldn't have been more of a dead-end place. But, at the same time, I go back and... it's still safe, overwhelmingly, and still affluent, too, and, unlike most places in the country, growing more so as more and more people flee the nearby cities. However, it certainly doesn't look like the place I grew up in. All the new construction is dreadfully ugly, modernist, Apple Store-chic crap, and all the new houses are cheap, ugly little boxes that are really just four walls of vinyl siding masquerading as a house (but still cost $600,000!) You go to the Costco and, looking and listening to the people around you, you'd think you'd somehow teleported to Bangalore. But, I think Bangalore is probably preferable to some of the nearby towns, which look more like Guatamala or Honduras every passing year. If I learned anything from living in a big city for a while, it's that there's an unspoken value that so many pretend not to know to being surrounded by people who speak the same language. How can you even form a community if you can't even speak to your neighbors? And, yes, I know - you can't, and that's the point. You mentioned the Kalergi Plan by name, so, you already know that.
Anyways, that's enough from me. Great read - always glad to know I'm not the only one who feels like an exile in my own country.
Thanks! And you're a great writer to toss off something that thoughtful and well-stated in a comment section!
My own hometown was much like what you describe, and it has met a similar fate. Though it certainly had its problems, one thing that truly did make it a great place to grow up was that there was a lot of undeveloped land near my neighborhood and a ton of kids around my age, which made the area perfect for exploring and outdoor adventures. All of that is gone now, subdivided and conquered by soulless developers who replaced the forests and streams with mass-produced, overpriced new houses and ugly office parks and chain-store dominated strip malls. Sadly, it's still a better place to grow up than much of the surrounding metro area, which has sunk deeper into a pit of dysfunction and crime and blight.
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. Sounds a lot like we had similar experiences in terms of where we're from. My town was at the edge of the metro area at the time and there were large, open expanses of maybe not open land, since it was all owned by ranchers and wealthy people, but it was all undeveloped. Now my hometown is completely built up - it's only tear downs from here on out. You drive north and all those wide open pastures and palatial estates that old money used to own is all built up and cluttered with crap. Worse still, every small town that direction had it's own unique flavor and aesthetic, but now they're all the same, exactly as you described it; overpriced new houses, blocks and blocks of five-on-one apartments that can't keep retail tenants on the ground floor, and big box stores with the same five or six chains in each one. Each one is basically indistinct from the others, and it just goes on and on and on for as far as the eye can see and beyond. The last scraps of unique culture and identity the place was sold out, so there could be what? A McDonald's on every corner? It really drives home the idea that we don't really have a cultural identity or anything; it's all just ambiguous consumer zones made up of fungible consumer units.
That's how mine was: a "town on the edge of the metro area," which still had some of its small-town feel from when it had been separated from the metro by several miles -- as often happens, that distance shrank until the metro reached it and it became a proper suburb (which is the era I grew up in). Now, the metro has swallowed it whole and consumed many miles beyond it in every direction, so now every possible empty space, no matter how tiny, in my old hometown is being filled in with the latest globohomo redevelopment.
What you say also speaks to the loss of distinct regional and local cultures in America. Increasingly, it's just one homogenized economic zone, where everything the least bit interesting has been commoditized and mass-produced until it's unpalatable trash. That has been a terrible loss. There's almost no point in traveling (at least for many destinations), since nearly every city is increasingly the same place, with all the same stores and pastimes and filled with the same soulless NPCs who can (unfortunately) be accurately described by your apropos term "fungible consumer units."
Oh, San Antonio... I spent a lot of time down there myself on vacation, though I never lived there. I used to love going there with my friends, and some parts of the city have improved, but the two times I went post-lockdowns... depressing as it was bleak.
So much of what you both said resonate deeply. Home is long gone, especially so when I visit and although in decline since my time, it still is much safer than the big city (Seattle) a couple of hours away scruff the water. Grew up in the same house until I was 23 and left and have been actively looking for others similarly situated ever since. So grateful to have found a few on here today! Looking forward to your next article/comments!
One of the greatest divides of our time is that WEIRD people (Western Educated Industrialised Rich (in the global sense) from Developed countries) don't realise they are the outliers of the global community. They believe everybody else simply needs to change through experience and education to embrace other cultures- after all, for them, multiculturalism is a very real living, breathing Utopia. Unfortunately, they are deeply wrong. Even in the West 70% to 80% of people prefer to live in culturally homogenous communities. It's why most sub-cultures self-segregate even in the absence of economic disparities. Gentrification isn't just about gentrification- it's about African American resentment at the erasure of culture by White people who like Yoga bars, acoustic guitarists yodelling and the politically correct complaining about their best stand up comics at local venues.
Homophily is like a family member, a beloved dog or a cherished family home. It cannot be replaced. A fifty year old woman who is attached to her culture whose community is displaced can never learn to be comfortable around her foreign-born neighbours, even if she is too polite to say anything about it. It's because many of the differences between cosmopolitans and the large majority of the population are rooted in brain differences. If that fifty year old woman cannot afford to move then she will become a lock-in within a community which is no longer her own. For most people, ease with other cultures simply cannot be learned.
The great irony is that the social science proves that as multiculturalism increases, social trust declines. It makes people far less likely to want to pay taxes to fund social safety nets. In all probability, it's the reason why America, with melting pot multiculturalism for centuries- when Europe was a patchwork of monocultures- never introduced social safety nets as extensive as those found in Western and Northern Europe. In embracing their Cultural Utopia, the Left put their Social Safety Net Utopia forever beyond their reach.
You shared some important truths in that comment, which unfortunately our ruling class refuses to acknowledge, making their luxury beliefs ruinously expensive for the rest of us. But as you point out, at least the Left's success with cramming multiculturalism down our throats has made other aspects of their agenda unworkable.
I'm lucky, I live in the house I grew up in, I hike the woods and trails I did when I was a kid, much of it unchanged - even as so much has changed around us.
I sense a disconnect though. Come, migrants, for the good life - except we are in a process of taking it all away. This is a deliberate and intentional destruction of the global hegemon. It is turning America into the third world these migrants are fleeing, both with the migrants and the Woke/ESG/DIE policy. Anyone who defends that is my enemy.
That's awesome that the woods and trails you hiked as a kid are still there. The presence of nearby untamed forests to explore -- and lots of adventurous kids my age to explore them with -- was what really made growing up where I did so great. Sadly, those forests are all gone now, and the only places left for kids to explore are the virtual "realities" online. It's an abomination.
Completely agree. There were forested areas nearby that all the local kids explored often that are all long gone now. For me in particular, I recall fondly a small blueberry hobby farm that let you pick your own berries for a fee. It was right off on the bigger city roads and honestly the wonder of it to me today is that I was able to experience it and that it wasn’t gone already. I loved to listen to my parents and extended family talk about the area as they knew it growing up in the ‘30’s - ‘50’s era and I can tell you so many wonderful things are gone, that were replaced with either housing or some chain store or office building.
I think there is something about growing older and having a broader perspective that leads to nostalgia. As you said, the past was never perfect. When we are young we feel more vital and present, things have more of an impact on us. As we grow older we balance that with perspective and experience. It’s good for us to mature and grow wiser, but there will always be an emotional pull to an earlier time that felt simpler and more genuine, even if it was only due to our own youthful ignorance.
That's very true, but there is the additional element of "future shock," which does understandably lead to a desire to return "home" to the past, the same as one feels after spending a year in a foreign country -- however much you might like the people and the culture, it's not home. Of course, there's no going back to the past, so we have to make the most of our current situation. You put it well, that age brings perspective, maturity, and wisdom, and that allows us (hopefully) to see opportunities for good that we might miss if we were younger.
Your introduction really nailed it! I found myself holdng my breath in anticipation of which key piece of the unspoken truth you would dropping next. And I loved when you returned our gaze to the ponerogenic elites toward the end.
I'm imagining how I want to best share your article with my readers. I think I may focus on quote-celebrating the truth about the war on Westernkind and point them here read the rest.
Thank you, sir! Sadly, it is no exaggeration to call it a "war on Westernkind." If they were able to get everything they want, we would receive less mercy from them than we would from Ghenghis Khan. It is what it is. All that means is, surrender is not an option.
I never understood how people romanticize Blockbuster, because that does exist and not just for the era.
Blockbuster was a corporate bulldozer that destroyed and consumed the ecosystem of mom & pop video stores. Celebrating a corporation that eliminated thousands of family businesses, where owners once bothered to know their customers as humans, is hardly any different than celebrating the dehumanizing Googles and Facebooks of today.
I hear you. Yeah, I don't get wistful about Blockbuster itself, but more so the era in my own life when I would sometimes go to Blockbuster to rent a movie; and seeing a visual reminder of Blockbuster, in turn, reminds me of that era. I think that's what's really going on with a lot of nostalgia for things: it's not the thing itself, it's the part of your own life which that thing symbolizes. Of course, even that is a mistake (to be overly sentimental about the past), but we probably all do it, at least about some things. But a lot of folks seem not to get this: they take that feeling of nostalgia as a sign that whatever provoked that feeling must itself be somehow superior to whatever is around today, so they really will try to argue that Blockbuster was somehow this great thing and that the world would be better today if Blockbuster stores were still thriving in every city.
For me what I've just read helps make Substack the number one online event.
I don't like the word 'resonate' but on this occasion your essay did just that. You've presented the question and given the answer to something almost always on my mind.
And the word "resonate" is interesting. The analogy between ideas/insights/experiences/meaning being shared among minds, on the one hand, and the way that sounds at a given pitch can sometimes cause resonant vibrations of different objects, on the other, really does convey something very real that we all sometimes experience, but for which there is no precise word. I share your reservations about the word "resonate" because of how it is often misused or overused, but sometimes it really is the only word that really fits.
Just discovered you Stack of Subs. Will be subbing.
This paragraph hit me very hard as I feel like I am going through a quarter-life crisis of sort. I am not in a bad place, just things are changing and future-shock is the perfect term I've been looking for. My life is good, but I guess I am growing up in a world that I wish was different.
"For now, let me just point out that if you feel disoriented and disconnected from what’s real, that is a normal reaction to a profoundly unnatural state of affairs. You are experiencing severe Future Shock — yes, it is a thing, every bit as real as the culture shock you would experience if you traveled down the rabbit hole and got stuck in Wonderland, in a surreal realm where everything means the opposite of what you think it means. Moreover, that sense that everything is “fake and ghey” is your soul letting you know it’s still alive, reminding you that you are not one of the Hylics/NPCs. So that sense of alienation is a good thing, because it shows you are psychologically healthy, since you are feeling a natural emotional response to profound changes in your environment."
Thanks, and I'm glad to hear you found it helpful. We're all on this crazy ride together, passing through this strange and uncharted territory and trying to make the best of things. The next year will probably be the most *interesting* year in living memory, so I'm trying to reframe any anxiety I might feel about the future as suspense, like we're on the precipice of some exciting plot twists.
My mid-twenties was the start of me paying attention to changes and started to notice first feelings of future shock. Today at almost 60, things have changed beyond recognition in many areas.
Daniel, THIS has been so much on my mind lately, and i love that there's a word for it: FUTURE-SHOCK
i think i appreciated this article above the others esp because you took time to reminisce about how we older than twenty-somthin' might really be feeling inside. i long for people to tell the truth in these ways, to talk to eachother about what matters, and acknowledge what ALL we lost - for i believe we will have to grieve together at some point to heal--- or else, implode and dissolve.
Thank you for reading and for taking the time to leave the heartfelt comment, Yolanda! You said it well! "We will have to grieve together at some point to heal -- or else, implode and dissolve." Very true! I think that's possible. Unfortunately it will probably take things getting even worse before people are willing to do this, but hard times (especially with evil dropping its mask of sanity and operating, undisguised, more openly) tend to provoke people to seek spiritual awakening and transformation. I believe that is coming. I'm clarifying my thoughts on that theme (a never-ending project) and will write about it soon, so stay tuned!
Until recently, I never understood people that romanticize high school. My high school experience wasn't bad at all, but the ensuing decades were significantly better. Why would I want to go back?
But I kind of get it now. How's this for privilege: until COVID, my life generally improved year after year. Nothing is linear, of course, but the general trend was up. Now I look back at 2019 with a melancholy wistfulness that I believe is called "nostalgia."
I don't actually want to return to 2019, not really. I'd be living in a web of lies, and this time I'd be aware of it; I don't think my mind can withstand that much cognative dissonance. But the blend of security and possibility that 2019 held - I miss that. Part of aging, I suppose, is reckoning with the reality that at some point that secure station with seemingly endless future possibilities - that home - isn't coming back.
The truth will set you free, it's said, and I believe it. But what goes unsaid is that once free there are only a few paths worth taking, and none of them lead backwards. And so we travel onward, knowing we can't recreate what we've lost, but with a growing determination to make the most of the path we're on.
Thank you for your piece - I always appreciate a good reflection that prompts me to do the same.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There's a palpable, nationwide loss of optimism about the future; it was on life support after the Bush Administration, and now the scamdemic and the Brandon Administration have finally driven a stake through its heart. Everyone knows now that things are not going to get better before they get a whole lot worse, but nobody knows when the bottom will drop out or how things will play out once it does. Michael Anton wrote an excellent obituary for the American constitutional republic (https://compactmag.com/article/the-pessimistic-case-for-the-future), and it's practically impossible to make the case that he exaggerated the state of America's terminal decline. So there's no way out but through! Might as well make the most of it, since we have to take the ride anyway, and prepare to make a go of it on the other side of all this.
I and many of my friends refer to ourselves as "refugees", and only half in jest. We grew up in different parts of the country, but we all agree that the places we remember from the past are dead and gone. There was nothing left for us in those places. It's a difficult adjustment to make, and, for a while, you really feel like a man out of both time and space, but thankfully, as you said, there are other expats, and I was fortunate to meet a lot of them, and they continue to come at pace.
You're right about home not needing to be perfect to be homesick for it. I was raised in the most cookie-cutter, soulless suburb imaginable. It was the quintessential place to buy in and sell out, as they say. The most culture we had were chain restaurants and groups of bored, schlubby middle-aged dads that would get together, dust off their instruments, and play old Boomer rock staples at the local watering holes on Friday nights. It was a decent place to grow up, but I lived there in my early twenties and couldn't have resented it more. For a young person, unmarried and unattached, it couldn't have been more of a dead-end place. But, at the same time, I go back and... it's still safe, overwhelmingly, and still affluent, too, and, unlike most places in the country, growing more so as more and more people flee the nearby cities. However, it certainly doesn't look like the place I grew up in. All the new construction is dreadfully ugly, modernist, Apple Store-chic crap, and all the new houses are cheap, ugly little boxes that are really just four walls of vinyl siding masquerading as a house (but still cost $600,000!) You go to the Costco and, looking and listening to the people around you, you'd think you'd somehow teleported to Bangalore. But, I think Bangalore is probably preferable to some of the nearby towns, which look more like Guatamala or Honduras every passing year. If I learned anything from living in a big city for a while, it's that there's an unspoken value that so many pretend not to know to being surrounded by people who speak the same language. How can you even form a community if you can't even speak to your neighbors? And, yes, I know - you can't, and that's the point. You mentioned the Kalergi Plan by name, so, you already know that.
Anyways, that's enough from me. Great read - always glad to know I'm not the only one who feels like an exile in my own country.
Thanks! And you're a great writer to toss off something that thoughtful and well-stated in a comment section!
My own hometown was much like what you describe, and it has met a similar fate. Though it certainly had its problems, one thing that truly did make it a great place to grow up was that there was a lot of undeveloped land near my neighborhood and a ton of kids around my age, which made the area perfect for exploring and outdoor adventures. All of that is gone now, subdivided and conquered by soulless developers who replaced the forests and streams with mass-produced, overpriced new houses and ugly office parks and chain-store dominated strip malls. Sadly, it's still a better place to grow up than much of the surrounding metro area, which has sunk deeper into a pit of dysfunction and crime and blight.
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. Sounds a lot like we had similar experiences in terms of where we're from. My town was at the edge of the metro area at the time and there were large, open expanses of maybe not open land, since it was all owned by ranchers and wealthy people, but it was all undeveloped. Now my hometown is completely built up - it's only tear downs from here on out. You drive north and all those wide open pastures and palatial estates that old money used to own is all built up and cluttered with crap. Worse still, every small town that direction had it's own unique flavor and aesthetic, but now they're all the same, exactly as you described it; overpriced new houses, blocks and blocks of five-on-one apartments that can't keep retail tenants on the ground floor, and big box stores with the same five or six chains in each one. Each one is basically indistinct from the others, and it just goes on and on and on for as far as the eye can see and beyond. The last scraps of unique culture and identity the place was sold out, so there could be what? A McDonald's on every corner? It really drives home the idea that we don't really have a cultural identity or anything; it's all just ambiguous consumer zones made up of fungible consumer units.
That's how mine was: a "town on the edge of the metro area," which still had some of its small-town feel from when it had been separated from the metro by several miles -- as often happens, that distance shrank until the metro reached it and it became a proper suburb (which is the era I grew up in). Now, the metro has swallowed it whole and consumed many miles beyond it in every direction, so now every possible empty space, no matter how tiny, in my old hometown is being filled in with the latest globohomo redevelopment.
What you say also speaks to the loss of distinct regional and local cultures in America. Increasingly, it's just one homogenized economic zone, where everything the least bit interesting has been commoditized and mass-produced until it's unpalatable trash. That has been a terrible loss. There's almost no point in traveling (at least for many destinations), since nearly every city is increasingly the same place, with all the same stores and pastimes and filled with the same soulless NPCs who can (unfortunately) be accurately described by your apropos term "fungible consumer units."
beautifully said Yakubian
I spent the first ten years of my life in a ranch house at the end of a dead end street next to a horse pasture.
Now, the place is a block from Loop 410, practically in the geographic center of the San Antonio city limits.
But at the time, with all the undeveloped land around, it was a great place to grow up. We were always outside.
Oh, San Antonio... I spent a lot of time down there myself on vacation, though I never lived there. I used to love going there with my friends, and some parts of the city have improved, but the two times I went post-lockdowns... depressing as it was bleak.
oh the loss of our land...
devastation abounds
So much of what you both said resonate deeply. Home is long gone, especially so when I visit and although in decline since my time, it still is much safer than the big city (Seattle) a couple of hours away scruff the water. Grew up in the same house until I was 23 and left and have been actively looking for others similarly situated ever since. So grateful to have found a few on here today! Looking forward to your next article/comments!
One of the greatest divides of our time is that WEIRD people (Western Educated Industrialised Rich (in the global sense) from Developed countries) don't realise they are the outliers of the global community. They believe everybody else simply needs to change through experience and education to embrace other cultures- after all, for them, multiculturalism is a very real living, breathing Utopia. Unfortunately, they are deeply wrong. Even in the West 70% to 80% of people prefer to live in culturally homogenous communities. It's why most sub-cultures self-segregate even in the absence of economic disparities. Gentrification isn't just about gentrification- it's about African American resentment at the erasure of culture by White people who like Yoga bars, acoustic guitarists yodelling and the politically correct complaining about their best stand up comics at local venues.
Homophily is like a family member, a beloved dog or a cherished family home. It cannot be replaced. A fifty year old woman who is attached to her culture whose community is displaced can never learn to be comfortable around her foreign-born neighbours, even if she is too polite to say anything about it. It's because many of the differences between cosmopolitans and the large majority of the population are rooted in brain differences. If that fifty year old woman cannot afford to move then she will become a lock-in within a community which is no longer her own. For most people, ease with other cultures simply cannot be learned.
The great irony is that the social science proves that as multiculturalism increases, social trust declines. It makes people far less likely to want to pay taxes to fund social safety nets. In all probability, it's the reason why America, with melting pot multiculturalism for centuries- when Europe was a patchwork of monocultures- never introduced social safety nets as extensive as those found in Western and Northern Europe. In embracing their Cultural Utopia, the Left put their Social Safety Net Utopia forever beyond their reach.
You shared some important truths in that comment, which unfortunately our ruling class refuses to acknowledge, making their luxury beliefs ruinously expensive for the rest of us. But as you point out, at least the Left's success with cramming multiculturalism down our throats has made other aspects of their agenda unworkable.
I'm a big Rob Henderson fan myself, on the luxury beliefs. Congratulations on your Substack growth- you're really making it happen!
Thanks! And Rob Henderson is great. His concept of luxury beliefs is extremely useful and accurate!
I'm lucky, I live in the house I grew up in, I hike the woods and trails I did when I was a kid, much of it unchanged - even as so much has changed around us.
I sense a disconnect though. Come, migrants, for the good life - except we are in a process of taking it all away. This is a deliberate and intentional destruction of the global hegemon. It is turning America into the third world these migrants are fleeing, both with the migrants and the Woke/ESG/DIE policy. Anyone who defends that is my enemy.
That's awesome that the woods and trails you hiked as a kid are still there. The presence of nearby untamed forests to explore -- and lots of adventurous kids my age to explore them with -- was what really made growing up where I did so great. Sadly, those forests are all gone now, and the only places left for kids to explore are the virtual "realities" online. It's an abomination.
Completely agree. There were forested areas nearby that all the local kids explored often that are all long gone now. For me in particular, I recall fondly a small blueberry hobby farm that let you pick your own berries for a fee. It was right off on the bigger city roads and honestly the wonder of it to me today is that I was able to experience it and that it wasn’t gone already. I loved to listen to my parents and extended family talk about the area as they knew it growing up in the ‘30’s - ‘50’s era and I can tell you so many wonderful things are gone, that were replaced with either housing or some chain store or office building.
I think there is something about growing older and having a broader perspective that leads to nostalgia. As you said, the past was never perfect. When we are young we feel more vital and present, things have more of an impact on us. As we grow older we balance that with perspective and experience. It’s good for us to mature and grow wiser, but there will always be an emotional pull to an earlier time that felt simpler and more genuine, even if it was only due to our own youthful ignorance.
That's very true, but there is the additional element of "future shock," which does understandably lead to a desire to return "home" to the past, the same as one feels after spending a year in a foreign country -- however much you might like the people and the culture, it's not home. Of course, there's no going back to the past, so we have to make the most of our current situation. You put it well, that age brings perspective, maturity, and wisdom, and that allows us (hopefully) to see opportunities for good that we might miss if we were younger.
Your introduction really nailed it! I found myself holdng my breath in anticipation of which key piece of the unspoken truth you would dropping next. And I loved when you returned our gaze to the ponerogenic elites toward the end.
I'm imagining how I want to best share your article with my readers. I think I may focus on quote-celebrating the truth about the war on Westernkind and point them here read the rest.
Thank you, sir! Sadly, it is no exaggeration to call it a "war on Westernkind." If they were able to get everything they want, we would receive less mercy from them than we would from Ghenghis Khan. It is what it is. All that means is, surrender is not an option.
I never understood how people romanticize Blockbuster, because that does exist and not just for the era.
Blockbuster was a corporate bulldozer that destroyed and consumed the ecosystem of mom & pop video stores. Celebrating a corporation that eliminated thousands of family businesses, where owners once bothered to know their customers as humans, is hardly any different than celebrating the dehumanizing Googles and Facebooks of today.
I hear you. Yeah, I don't get wistful about Blockbuster itself, but more so the era in my own life when I would sometimes go to Blockbuster to rent a movie; and seeing a visual reminder of Blockbuster, in turn, reminds me of that era. I think that's what's really going on with a lot of nostalgia for things: it's not the thing itself, it's the part of your own life which that thing symbolizes. Of course, even that is a mistake (to be overly sentimental about the past), but we probably all do it, at least about some things. But a lot of folks seem not to get this: they take that feeling of nostalgia as a sign that whatever provoked that feeling must itself be somehow superior to whatever is around today, so they really will try to argue that Blockbuster was somehow this great thing and that the world would be better today if Blockbuster stores were still thriving in every city.
For me what I've just read helps make Substack the number one online event.
I don't like the word 'resonate' but on this occasion your essay did just that. You've presented the question and given the answer to something almost always on my mind.
Thanks.
Thanks for reading! Glad you found it helpful.
And the word "resonate" is interesting. The analogy between ideas/insights/experiences/meaning being shared among minds, on the one hand, and the way that sounds at a given pitch can sometimes cause resonant vibrations of different objects, on the other, really does convey something very real that we all sometimes experience, but for which there is no precise word. I share your reservations about the word "resonate" because of how it is often misused or overused, but sometimes it really is the only word that really fits.
Just discovered you Stack of Subs. Will be subbing.
This paragraph hit me very hard as I feel like I am going through a quarter-life crisis of sort. I am not in a bad place, just things are changing and future-shock is the perfect term I've been looking for. My life is good, but I guess I am growing up in a world that I wish was different.
"For now, let me just point out that if you feel disoriented and disconnected from what’s real, that is a normal reaction to a profoundly unnatural state of affairs. You are experiencing severe Future Shock — yes, it is a thing, every bit as real as the culture shock you would experience if you traveled down the rabbit hole and got stuck in Wonderland, in a surreal realm where everything means the opposite of what you think it means. Moreover, that sense that everything is “fake and ghey” is your soul letting you know it’s still alive, reminding you that you are not one of the Hylics/NPCs. So that sense of alienation is a good thing, because it shows you are psychologically healthy, since you are feeling a natural emotional response to profound changes in your environment."
Thanks, and I'm glad to hear you found it helpful. We're all on this crazy ride together, passing through this strange and uncharted territory and trying to make the best of things. The next year will probably be the most *interesting* year in living memory, so I'm trying to reframe any anxiety I might feel about the future as suspense, like we're on the precipice of some exciting plot twists.
My mid-twenties was the start of me paying attention to changes and started to notice first feelings of future shock. Today at almost 60, things have changed beyond recognition in many areas.
It's the 1970s all over again, only gayer and with AutoTune.
Daniel, THIS has been so much on my mind lately, and i love that there's a word for it: FUTURE-SHOCK
i think i appreciated this article above the others esp because you took time to reminisce about how we older than twenty-somthin' might really be feeling inside. i long for people to tell the truth in these ways, to talk to eachother about what matters, and acknowledge what ALL we lost - for i believe we will have to grieve together at some point to heal--- or else, implode and dissolve.
Thank you for this meaningful piece.
Thank you for reading and for taking the time to leave the heartfelt comment, Yolanda! You said it well! "We will have to grieve together at some point to heal -- or else, implode and dissolve." Very true! I think that's possible. Unfortunately it will probably take things getting even worse before people are willing to do this, but hard times (especially with evil dropping its mask of sanity and operating, undisguised, more openly) tend to provoke people to seek spiritual awakening and transformation. I believe that is coming. I'm clarifying my thoughts on that theme (a never-ending project) and will write about it soon, so stay tuned!
Thank you for this and I agree. Good to find I’m not alone.
Aaaaand some music to play next time you hear a DIE womyn complaining about Patriarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq3YD7fNZTI
I would say that letting white immigrant refugees from Europe settle in Americas, Australia, South Africa was the original Kalergi Plan.
Share your GNR experience. Back in the 80s, people were pining for the 50s and early 60s. See Hairspray, or Stand by Me, or Dirty Dancing.