Tocky on 12/10/2024 at 03:37
I used to have recurring zombie dreams so I suppose I feared aging and death but now that I'm here and am likely in my last twenty years I no longer care. I miss people. So many have gone before me that my going just isn't as much of a deal as I thought it would be. The world has turned into a thing I don't like as well as I did in my time anyway. And the music sucks. The popular music anyway.
But I still have nightmares. I saw the news of an elevator malfunction at a gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado. It killed one and trapped seven in a tight space for nearly eight hours. I have claustrophobia. I have fought it all my life. I purposely go into caves like Mammoth in Kentucky and The Lost Sea at Sweetwater, Tennessee to fight it. I do well. Nobody knows but my wife. But on the tarmac at LAX when I was in that Spirit airlines coffin to save a few hundred we were there for two hours after we landed stranded waiting for weather rerouted planes from Las Vegas to land. I nearly lost it. My breathing quickened and I could see myself screaming and clawing out eyes and scrambling over seats and people to get out. I didn't. I closed my eyes and imagined the open spaces of beaches and the tops of mountains. But I could see giving in to terror. It must have been a long hard birth for me.
But the thing is, we nearly went on that abandoned gold mine tour that trapped those people when we went to Cripple Creek. When we left we passed it and I got out to take pictures and would have gone had it not been so early and the tour for later. I would have been chewing my fingers off in madness by the end of seven hours in a confined space. I would have been a jibbering lunatic. So what if one of these times I get confined? I can't move. I can't breathe. Will I rip the roof off and crawl like a spider out of the hole? I don't know. I will be insane.
But I don't have those dreams. My latest nightmares are of being trapped in a Scientology building and having to pretend I believe as they do while searching for a non existent window or door to escape. The horror of religion and having to give up my mind is even worse than my innate claustrophobia. I don't know why. I've lived all my life among those who don't value thinking over belief. I've had to pretend and come to terms with a society which is in some ways insane and I thought I had adjusted well. In my later years I've come to understand I haven't. The despair of a faltering humanity that does not value logic over a pretense to preserve it's emotional well being is increasingly scary. Will intelligence survive to carry on to greater heights or degenerate into the babble of salve to soothe the fact we will one day just not be? It's okay if I'm not alive. It's not okay if humanity does not surpass this insanity to somehow conquer all knowledge and the universe and time itself. Ultimate entropy must not win.
So what scares you this Halloween season?
Subjective Effect on 12/10/2024 at 04:59
The sheer stupidity of man scares me. Our willingness to destroy every possible good thing in the world over some stupid ideology; religious, political or even "compassionate".
It is a type of entropy - if we decide to work together so much is achievable but it is like living in a nightmare where all you have to do is turn around but the surging mass of fellow humans is driving you over a precipice.
Nicker on 12/10/2024 at 06:15
What scares me? Actually agreeing with SE in this thread.
I'm not sure what you mean by entropy? The chaos of the crowd? The fragility of order? Overpopulation?
I think the problem is that, due to evolution, we have just enough social intelligence to have the advantage over most solitary species, but not nearly enough to overcome our selfish natures. And while we can achieve great things working together, we also rely on visionary/charismatic leaders, and it's a bit of a crap shoot as to whether their visions are creative or destructive. Sometimes they start as the former and morph into the latter.
So I guess what scares me is that we will never grow out of that dichotomy. I think the species will survive but we may well lose all the marvels we have made. That doesn't so much scare me as makes me immensely sad.
That and everything Tocky said plus drowning. Anything to do with not being able to breathe. I think I'd rather be euthanized than put on a ventilator.
Quote:
Ultimate entropy must not win.
Existence (most likely) is eternal but all configurations are temporary.
PigLick on 12/10/2024 at 10:08
the sound of young children giggling at 3am outside my window
heywood on 13/10/2024 at 00:13
Whoa. Tocky. I haven't seen a TP job like that since the 80s, then saved for the rare unfortunate family who were away from home on Halloween night. I just checked the calendar and it's not Halloween yet, so you or the lady must be popular in the neighborhood, or infamous. Also, there are Dead heads in the South?
To answer your question seriously, it's kids getting hurt. A natural parent response I suppose. Also, I wouldn't call it scary, but I am kept awake at night sometimes by thoughts about where the world is going.
DuatDweller on 13/10/2024 at 02:36
I used to be scared of nightmares, but now I enjoy them.
When it was the 911 attack I had nightmares of being trapped in a metro (subway) station below rubble from the twin towers. It really got to me that time, and the quantity of deaths that ensued in the aftermath of the attacks.
Now in real life I wouldn't enter a sewer for several reasons, being washed away with the flow is one, the total darkness, I always sleep with the lights on (quake country so better get ready to rise fast and get under the reinforced concrete archway), in 2010, by that quake me and my mom were awake (3 am), I was watching discovery channel, something about how ancient people, someone don't know which civilization had built a sphere with another sphere inside and you could see it through by the net pattern on the outer sphere, we realized there was a quake going on and got to the archway, the power got off after a few minutes, except for LED lamp that was connected to the UPS, it was for the moment the only light available until I used my LED portable emergency light.
Now I don't fear quakes, I actually kind of enjoy them, but respect them, and take precautions. Such as not going outside when the quake in going on, something (most likely a roof tile) could fall on your head, so running scared is not an option.
Now my female cat had kittens just 11 days before, and the kittens didn't woke up with the shake (they were in the couch), but we couldn't find their mother anywhere in the living room, until I pointed the light on the curtain rails, there she was scared. Oh and the dust that came about after the quake unsettling. 8.8 Richter.
No damage to the house, some rare building semi collapsed but not many about 8-10 buildings.
If I were to fear something that would be total darkness. And deep waters.
Tocky on 13/10/2024 at 03:14
Deadheads in the south? Most of my friends were of one sort or another. That particular one is my granddaughter. I don't think she understands the full import of being a Deadhead. Her mother has a glimmer but is more into the counterculture fashion aspect I suspect. I was never overly fond of their music but I was fond of certain aspects of their followers.
And yes I am afraid for my family and not being able to protect them from monsters in human form. I know there are a lot of great people in the world and I want them to only meet those. So much is just luck. It's scary.
Entropy is decay. Decay of progress in science over belief in conspiracy. Decay of reason. Decay of societal cohesion. Decay of decency for unreasoning fear. Decay of all energy in the expansion of matter into an endless void over countless billions of years which is ultimate entropy. The end. None of that must ever be but you see inklings of it now. I never thought I had been living in the apex of humanity but what if I was? That is scary.
And then my kids and kids kids come and roll me along with their friends and everything seems okay. They hug me and even the ones I don't know do and I laugh. We are going to be okay. I've passed along something good to reverberate down through time.
heywood on 13/10/2024 at 12:17
I love Grateful Dead music (when it is played well). I enjoyed walking the scene at Dead shows, especially when Jerry was still alive. Where I grew up in Western NY, when the Grateful Dead were in town, they took over the city. I usually enjoy the company of people who like the Dead. But I'm not a Deadhead in the sense that I made the Dead part of my persona. And I haven't been to a Dead show in a while. Phish has mostly taken over that jam band space in my head.
Harvester on 13/10/2024 at 14:17
My fear is somewhat the opposite of wat Nicker and Tocky say about religious people. Not that I'm afraid of atheists or people of a different religion per se, I'm friends with some of them. But nowadays you hear comments like 'we should forcibly close and repurpose all churches' or 'religious people should not be allowed to participate in politics'. I have heard these things on this very forum. What I'm afraid of is the anti-religious sentiment becoming so strong that I won't be allowed to practice my beliefs as a peaceful Christian who's not harming anyone. Tocky and Nicker are right to be scared of Christian nationalism and fundamentalism, I'm scared of those people too. But I don't want the backlash against that to be so strong that I can't practice my beliefs and serve my neighbors peacefully as I'd like. I think Christianity should not be in a position of power, it functions best in the margins of society, just serving the downtrodden and poor and unhappy people without making a big deal of it. Many churches, organizations and individuals are actually doing that (I could give examples in my own country/city), but as I said, they're doing that relatively quietly in the background, so you don't hear about it too much. What you hear are the loudmouths who want to run the country and make it a theocracy, and I certainly understand being scared of that, so you guys have my sympathy. I just hope myself and other peaceful Christians just trying to be good people in the world and trying the serve the Lord by serving society will be left alone. And I wish that for peaceful Muslims and people of other faiths too. But I also wish that everyone is free to be an atheist in all countries in the world.
