Another weird thread: Why everyone seems so angry

We are all forced to do stuff we dont want to do, everyday.

I dont want to drive a car burn fuel and pump out bad gases that hurt us: but i have to.

I dont want to work for that big company that does things i dont agree with, i need money to feed and clothe myself: So i have to

I dont want to vote for a small selection of idiots who are going to cause me to pay more tax, go to war with people eve never met: But i have to.

The list goes on. Is this why everyones so angry? is this why half the country is on anti depressants? Is this why we enjoy watching violent tv and playing games because we like to see someone that has it worse than we do?

a reply to: Biigs

Did you choose your life or did someone else choose it for you?
Its a double edged sword.

originally posted by: DrumsRfun
a reply to: Biigs

Did you choose your life or did someone else choose it for you?
Its a double edged sword.

How much control does anyone really have of their life and its course, most lifes are shaped from necessity and enviroment.

But you cant not have a bank account, you cant just live on land you own take and give nothing to the country. You have to get from A to B and since they dont build the things you need to live so A and B are a short walk apart you have to drive. To do all these things you must earn money and pay tax.

I should mention the tax paying part is important because it directly fund wars often people do not want to get involved in.

a reply to: Biigs
I disagree, there are many options.
I never HAD to work for anyone as I have my own knowledge.
It was easier sure as the security net was ready set, but I made more working for myself.
Like someone above asked, "did you choose your life or did someone else choose it for you?"

I am not fully satisfied with my life and I am no millionaire, but I am happy and comfortable and surrounded with enough toys, friends and family to keep me busy enough.
I learned from many old men the secret to a happy retirement, MANY power tools!!

a reply to: g146541

Are you happy, or are you just content?

Some days im content, nothing much bothers me i have a good easy day at work. But am i happy? Im happy when im on a beach sipping a cocktail i cant even pronounce the name of, sunning myself maybe with the radio playing some oldies.

Thats the difference.

a reply to: Biigs
When I started plumbing, my boss gave me a pair of gloves, and gradually I learned everything I could and over time got my own tools.
After a careers worth of time, I can do anything the big companies could do.
It just takes time and dedication.

originally posted by: g146541
a reply to: Biigs
When I started plumbing, my boss gave me a pair of gloves, and gradually I learned everything I could and over time got my own tools.
After a careers worth of time, I can do anything the big companies could do.
It just takes time and dedication.

You had a teacher for years and learned a valuable trade, people dont normally get that dropped in their lap.

Some parents even hinder their childs education and force them to desperation and crime. And they certainly are not happy or content.

a reply to: Biigs

Hey Biigs

About the only things that get to me are those which are dishonorable or discourteous. The latter sometimes makes me angry, but only for a little while.

The past half century has taught me that life, while it's not exactly short, does go on.

Being angry is a choice. A bad one. Try to not get upset over things you can't change (like bad drivers). Fix the things that you can.

a reply to: Biigs

Kind of like we're between a rock and a hard place. I kind of worry about our military and police. They can be turned against us citizens for the same notion you described. Even though they don't like the idea of attacking citizens, they need a job and a pay check to survive.

In reality the world is a slave to this system. A job and money keeps us tamed and in control. The moment people don't have money in their pockets or food to eat, is when humanity will rise up and hopefully change it for the better of man kind.

a reply to: Biigs
I am happy when I have family and friends around, I am Uber content otherwise as I always have my dogs.
Whether my drink has an umbrella in it or is just water.
There was a sheryll crow song years back and it had a line in it that resonated with me, "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got".
That pretty much sums up my situation.
Maybe I am just the most lucky fool you will ever know, I just might be nutz and delusional though.

originally posted by: Snarl
a reply to: Biigs

Hey Biigs

About the only things that get to me are those which are dishonorable or discourteous. The latter sometimes makes me angry, but only for a little while.

The past half century has taught me that life, while it's not exactly short, does go on.

Being angry is a choice. A bad one. Try to not get upset over things you can't change (like bad drivers). Fix the things that you can.

People are definitely more easily agitated than ever before. Less people help that old lady across the road.

People are so busy with every minute documented and planned on their smart phone they simply dont have time for random life experiences.

And i firmly believe people simply dont realize how negative and busy they are and what they are missing.

Some are so stuck that they might not go to a party if they arnt friends with X number of people that are going, from the e-vite. We are just becoming emotionless robots and have forgot what it means to be alive and have fun.

I played Frisbee with my aging father the other day for an hour. Didnt say a word. was glorious. did i hit facebook after and tell 500 people i barely know that i did? No, because thats mine.

EDIT: i realize the irony of now saying that to you guys, but im not in it for likes.

a reply to: Biigs

Chose to follow my own path in life .. dont have to put up with all that .. closest thing to leaders out here are the village elders in the nearby hmong villages .. dread making my annual trips downriver as getting more and more where hate going into cities .. overall life is good and am happy where im at .. would end up mental if was forced to live in that cesspool people call civilization .. nice to visit but dont want to live in it ..

a reply to: Biigs
Aaaand now we know!


G146541 Likes this

a reply to: Biigs

I think it comes down to the speed of the disassociation between our old ways of life, and the new way of life. We were never supposed to live our lives around paperwork, and box ticking. Human beings are not naturally disposed toward order, toward arbitrary rules. We used to hunt and gather, and survive according to our ability to do so. The modern way of life does not reflect that nearly enough, and so I think many people feel that something is very wrong somewhere, that something is off about life on Earth as we live it today, in the developed world at least.

These days, you can sweat and toil and push and make every possible effort toward making your future better, toward making your families future better, toward even improving the lot of your fellow man, but if you miss a zero somewhere, or if the Taxman does not like something about you (often something you have no control over yourself), or what have you, then God help you!

This is not how we are meant to live. All this asphalt, concrete, paperwork, politicians and pencil pushing, it is bad for the soul. Add all the effects of that on the news, war, famine, sorrow and suffering that happens all over the planet, all these things play into that feeling that people have such a torrid time trying to put a finger on.

But as a wise person once said, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube, and I think this feeling of fruststration and anger reflects that.

a reply to: TrueBrit

You make some good points.

Perhaps we are not actually as in control of this world as we think we are. Even in a perfect, peaceful world, we have to deal with nature and climate.

I guess we are never really free of obligations. Shooting each other however is definitely something we can control and should stop. We need farmers not soldiers.

originally posted by: WeRpeons
a reply to: Biigs

Kind of like we're between a rock and a hard place. I kind of worry about our military and police. They can be turned against us citizens for the same notion you described. Even though they don't like the idea of attacking citizens, they need a job and a pay check to survive.

In reality the world is a slave to this system. A job and money keeps us tamed and in control. The moment people don't have money in their pockets or food to eat, is when humanity will rise up and hopefully change it for the better of man kind.

Has somthing been created that enslaves us in one way or another that people are too busy treading water to stay alive they dont realize?

a reply to: Biigs

You are churning out the interesting threads today, Biigs, lol.



This is one of my most favorite ideas that I toy with in my head so prepare yourself for a super long reply, lol. I started thinking about this actually 20 years ago because of an anthropology class that I took. In that class, our very eccentric professor (who was an amazing lady, btw--very cool) gave us this study that had been done where they compared the free time of an Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherer to the average American. Before she gave the study for us to read, she asked us all which one we thought actually had the most amount of free time and which one spent more time working. Just about all of us answered that the hunter-gatherer was the one that had less free time and had to spend more time working.

We were wrong. The hunter-gatherer actually spent most of their day at leisure as the only things that they needed to do that day was hunt down the needed source of food for the day and any maintenance tasks for the objects that they utilized. The bulk of the day was actually spent in leisure activity and caregiving activities to the group's children with all the labor being divided. The average American, on the other hand, had all those facets of modern technology to "make life easier" like the toaster, the dishwasher, the laundry machine, car, electricity and more to pay for as part of their daily maintenance of their lives.

Now that's not to say that we should all go run out and become hunter-gatherers but it should give us some amount of pause in understanding that our lives are a product of our choices. We choose those comforts and amenities and, in turn, have to work to pay for them. It's impossible for us to become hunter-gatherers here in the US but we can choose how much we're going to vest ourselves into those amenities and goods and strike a balance where we can possibly become more content (or less resentful).

The thing is that it's long been the case where we have to do things that we don't want to do in order to survive. That's nothing new at all. A hundred or so years ago when factories were being constructed, did those men, women and children resent having to go into those frequently dangerous places every day in order to survive? You bet they probably did. In fact, you can be certain of it as both Europe and the US were being rocked by worker protests to the point of them almost generating revolutions in response. So yep, they were as irritable and irked as we were and moreso because there were serious dangers in those early factories. Our lives, comparably, are more like a kooshy version of hell. Why?

I think you nail it right on the head. It's not that we don't understand that to survive in the world that we've created equates to doing things that we don't like. It's because we feel like we don't have any other choice. We feel like we can't get that nifty electric car because they tend to be so darned expensive. We feel like we can't do something else for a living because the employment market is so harsh that quitting a job to do something else feels like inviting destitution and homelessness into our lives. We feel like we can't vote for the other guy that nobody knows because god knows what will actually be voted in in in his place because we went against the political stream.

And, be it because we have 24/7 access to information and news every day or because things really are turning to crap, we're constantly reminded of what we're stuck in and it grates us. In the words of Mario Savio:

"There's a time where the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at hurt, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part and you've got to put your bodies on the wheels, the levers upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."

Now we may not necessarily feel our irritations so far as Savio did when he said those words on the steps of Sproul Hall that we're going to do such a thing. However, I think a lot of people can kind of get what he felt there. Looking out at the world sometimes just makes you feel like throwing up your hands and saying "**** it".

I'm tired. Are you tired? I may not be feeling like throwing myself at those gears but man, I hate feeling like I have so little choices where the number one employers and safe bets are those corporations, where the only car I can afford is a gas guzzling fume puker and where we keep having the same old lousy politicians doing the same old lousy things because of the same old problems. It's kind of stupid.

You ever see Rage Against the Machine's video for Testify? It'd be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that they were complaining about the same things that some of us are complaining about today now 20 years ago and what's changed?

youtu.be...

Nothin'. Frustrating, isn't it?

a reply to: TrueBrit

Awesome post and laughed that you brought up hunter-gatherers, too. When I lived with the Diné, I once participated in a blackening ceremony to treat a young Diné who had been living in LA for a few years. What ailed him? The medicine man said it was "bilagaana sickness" or "white man sickness". He didn't mean as a racial thing at all and I'm certain of that because the young man in question was turned over to me for care in the days following where he was most vulnerable. The medicine man saw me as not having such a sickness and I'm pasty white. Bilagaana sickness was a total loss of touch with the world we actually live in and our place in it in lieu of a false and sick construction of it. That same medicine man would probably say that you're clear of it, too.

a reply to: Biigs

I have no bank account. Never had one in the past.

I am 36 and have never had a driver's license. Ever.

I can walk 20 miles in less than 4 hours.

People are constantly calling me crazy for walking a mile or two.

I think it's funny that you say "you can't not have a bank account".

People are strange.

originally posted by: applesthateatpeople
a reply to: Biigs

I have no bank account. Never had one in the past.

I am 36 and have never had a driver's license. Ever.

I can walk 20 miles in less than 4 hours.

People are constantly calling me crazy for walking a mile or two.

I think it's funny that you say "you can't not have a bank account".

People are strange.

Consider this.

If you are a child born in a town or city and your parents rent their house, which is extremely common for millions of people - to "get out of" that place and therefore be able to live off the land as such, you need money. You cant go to far because you are young and your parents are struggling financially as it is. You get a job, the only job you can get working for a local busniess. He pays you but to be taxed correctly its best to be paid via bank transfers, checks are possible to but then you still need a bank and cash in hand in rare now (really rare).

So you are now "in the system" even though all you wanted was to be left alone on a patch of land with a modest house and grow most of your own thing, maybe grow somthing you can either sell or make something out of to sell. But initially for urban kids, the choice is simply not a choice.