3 ms·

Lightning doesn't make global news.

rdiddly 7y ago
Right, because, I suppose, it's 600X more commonplace than school shootings! So, we're paying close attention to exotic scenarios we'll likely never experience personally, and getting worked up over them. Meanwhile the various elephants in our rooms, the ones that are likely to be actual problems for us (heart disease, dying in a car crash, cancer, etc.) are drab and gray, so we ignore them. I mean who wants to solve real problems? BORRINGGG! Suddenly just now while typing I realized that 1) an exotic, unlikely scenario 2) that we engage closely with ...is precisely the paradigm of all fiction, fantasy and entertainment. What is a video game other than an exotic scenario you'll probably never experience in real life, that you engage with and try to "get into?" How about in ancient times? Sure - even back in Greece or in Shakespeare's time, "the play was the thing," namely an exotic scenario (the inside of the royal castle perhaps, which most people will never see) and "getting worked up over it" might be more aptly described by your drama teacher as sharing in the tension, drama and catharsis. Even our ideas about the future tend to center around exotic utopias, or exotic apocalypses (the writer John Michael Greer has talked about this) whereas in reality things will probably just continue to slowly get shittier, more annoying, less comfortable, less convenient etc., and ironically it'll probably be that way precisely because we've got our heads up our asses with fantasy (including things like "Hey there was a shooting; let's implement 1984.") and can't seem to reach a basic consensus about what reality is and how to keep our house in order. BORRINGGG!!! Anyway if we're using news of a school shooting as entertainment -- "Riveting tension!" says the New York Times. "So sad!" says the Washington Post -- then suddenly instead of a fictional universe with actors, we're using real people, real victims, for our entertainment. Which feels like a wrong to me. Huge tangent, sorry. Didn't expect to be writing in this direction today.

Right, because, I suppose, it's 600X more commonplace than school shootings! So, we're paying close attention to exotic scenarios we'll likely never experience personally, and getting worked up over them. Meanwhile the various elephants in our rooms, the ones that are likely to be actual problems for us (heart disease, dying in a car crash, cancer, etc.) are drab and gray, so we ignore them. I mean who wants to solve real problems? BORRINGGG! Suddenly just now while typing I realized that 1) an exotic, unlikely scenario 2) that we engage closely with ...is precisely the paradigm of all fiction, fantasy and entertainment. What is a video game other than an exotic scenario you'll probably never experience in real life, that you engage with and try to "get into?" How about in ancient times? Sure - even back in Greece or in Shakespeare's time, "the play was the thing," namely an exotic scenario (the inside of the royal castle perhaps, which most people will never see) and "getting worked up over it" might be more aptly described by your drama teacher as sharing in the tension, drama and catharsis. Even our ideas about the future tend to center around exotic utopias, or exotic apocalypses (the writer John Michael Greer has talked about this) whereas in reality things will probably just continue to slowly get shittier, more annoying, less comfortable, less convenient etc., and ironically it'll probably be that way precisely because we've got our heads up our asses with fantasy (including things like "Hey there was a shooting; let's implement 1984.") and can't seem to reach a basic consensus about what reality is and how to keep our house in order. BORRINGGG!!! Anyway if we're using news of a school shooting as entertainment -- "Riveting tension!" says the New York Times. "So sad!" says the Washington Post -- then suddenly instead of a fictional universe with actors, we're using real people, real victims, for our entertainment. Which feels like a wrong to me. Huge tangent, sorry. Didn't expect to be writing in this direction today.