Living in interesting times

ladyrebecca in #memoirmonday • 6 months ago

”Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, said the amazing Janis Joplin. If you ask people my generation, our life story here in Romania was all about freedom. Winning our freedom would be the obvious answer to this week prompt for #memoirmonday, the wonderful engagement initiative we owe to @ericvancewanlton. Eric asked: “How has your country changed during your lifetime?”

I wish I could answer that we became a free country, but did we? I wish I could say that what powered the popular revolutions of 1989 was the desire for freedom. History books will say it was so, but it’s hard to say we wanted freedom, because we simply didn’t know what freedom was. We had a romantic notion about freedom, which had little to do with what we call “freedom” today. What we did know about the Western world is that they had everything we lacked, especially consumer goods. The Western world was the land of plenty for people like us living in a world marked by scarcity. Freedom is an abstract concept and most people won’t bother with it. What people in Eastern Europe craved were Pepsi, jeans, coffee and cool T-shirts. You cannot blame people exhausted by the constant fight to provide basic goods for their families that they had only a vague concept about freedom. If my views sound cynical, please bear in mind I spent a lot of time in the street, at freedom protests. In 1989, I risked my life for freedom and I’m glad I was spared as I’m not sure what we call freedom today was worth the blood sacrifice. Today, here in Romania we have all the freedoms the Western world vaunts. What exactly are these freedoms? The freedom to choose between a dozen types of shampoos or toilet paper. The freedom to buy overpriced mass-produced crappy clothes at the mall. The freedom to travel, if you can afford it. The freedom to post memes on social media and like crap your friends post. The freedom to waste your life in front of the idiot box in the living room. Again, I’m being cynical, but many of my countrymen would tell you that this is the good life their parents and grandparents dreamed of.

Food court at our neighborhood mall - the place we were banned from during the pandemic for refusing the vaccine. I know people who traded their freedom for the dubious privilege of going to the mall...

Maybe it was just our bad luck that we joined the free world when the word freedom had become void of any meaning it might have had. Freedom of speech? "Yes, you have the right to say whatever you like as long as you say what we want you to say." There is no freedom of speech while Julian Assange rots in jail. Facebook will silence you if you say something untoward. During the pandemic, the website I was working for was taken off the Internet for questioning the official narrative. Overnight. Gone. How many in the West dare voice their disagreement with the woke agenda? Out loud, in their place of work, for instance? You might avoid charges, but do you dare lose your livelihood? Did you know that France recently passed a law making it a crime to encourage people to stay away from vaccines and “officially sanctioned treatments”? Seriously, telling someone not to get chemo is a crime. Is this freedom? Certainly, not a freedom worth dying for.

Here lie those who didn't live to see what freedom looks like

Yes, we are free to say whatever we want if we are willing to pay the price. Truckers in Canada were able to protest, but their leaders had their accounts frozen and some even went to jail. Students on US campuses were free to hold BLM protests, but were swiftly thrown off campus when they staged Free Palestine protests. Circling back to the idea that prompted this post - my country has changed a lot in my lifetime. We’ve gained all the Western freedoms. We ditched communism for cutthroat capitalism. We have all the Coca Cola we could want… and don’t drink it as in the meantime we learned it’s bad for your health! Go figure!

Most people are unhappy with the world they live in as deep down they know the modern Western society is profoundly ill. Still, few would join a new revolution, because they wouldn’t risk losing the job they hate, the unpaid house, the unpaid car and their summer vacation, that gives them strength to work another year for their masters. In 1989, it was much easier to join the ranks of the revolution as we had nothing left to lose.

#blockchainmemoryproject #story #silverbloggers #proofofbrain #life #blog

6 months ago in #memoirmonday by ladyrebecca

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deirdyweirdy 6 months ago

You pen a really interesting post. I grew up in an Ireland fairly recently freed from the yoke of British rule. 'It's a free country' was our favourite retort to any who would question our words or actions, and we genuinely felt that it was. I don't know how or when it happened, but we woke up one day in some second-rate dramatisation of 1984.

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ladyrebecca 6 months ago

Maybe we've grown wiser and saw that freedom was a relative term... and we're not the ones setting the limits.

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valued-customer 6 months ago

I am not surprised you are taken aback by what Ireland's national aspirations have become. I recently read Keith Woods discussion of Irish Nationalism and what Sinn Fein has beome is utterly the reverse of it's roots.

Keep the faith.

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deirdyweirdy 6 months ago

I've never voted as I don't believe that politics can change anything and besides, I don't like to encourage the buggers. My father was a lifelong republican socialist and Sinn Fein supporter and I'm certain he's turning in his grave to see them welcoming in the marauding hordes...Brits Out, everyone else in.

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ericvancewalton 6 months ago

This was so interesting to read the perspective of someone who's lived in both communism and capitalism. I remember how much hope and enthusiasm there was on this side of the world in the late 80's with communism coming to an end. It was a great time to be young, I was just graduating high school. Looking back now I realize how little of it I really understood.

I used to watch the YouTube channel Bald and Bankrupt (before he was banned from Russia) and the host would travel to remote parts of Russia and former Soviet countries and talk with people. The older people, almost always, said life was better under communism. I wasn't sure if it was just older people seeing the past as being better than it really was.

Capitalism's main flaw is it relies on perpetual growth to remain healthy but the rampant overconsumption of everything can't go on forever without destroying everything it promises to enrich. It reminds me of that symbol where the snake eats it's own tail, the ouroboros.

I've been following the evolution of artificial intelligence for the past few years and there's a huge change coming to the world economy. We'll be feeling the full impact between 2026-2030. Universal Basic Income is going to be the only answer for the massive job loss that's coming as A.I. and robotics take over nearly every job imaginable. The general consensus I've heard (from people I trust) are saying the average annual UBI income will be around $150-200K per person. I don't even know what that will look like here in America. Essentially everyone will be retired. People could work on their health/self-growth pursue hobbies but will they really?

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valued-customer 6 months ago

Real Capitalism has never been tried. What passes as Capitalism today is a perversion of Corporatism, just as Mussolini envisioned it.

"Universal Basic Income is going to be..."

A trap. Becoming dependent on inhuman and inhumane corporations will be a mistake every single human being that undertakes it will regret - if they live long enough to regret their enslavement to inhuman corporations.

We are born free, and we will die. It's best to die free. Most people will die slaves. Die free.

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ericvancewalton 6 months ago

Yeah, I don't disagree. I just don't know how we stop the A.I. train at this point. The only way, really, is to opt out of society. I have a hard time trusting any government to work for the common good of their citizens. At this point corporations and government are interchangeable.

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valued-customer 6 months ago

I was working all weekend, removing a rubble heap that had been overgrown by sod I couldn't mow, so I peeled back the sod and removed the rubble, then laid the sod back on the now flat lawn. I suppose an AI bot could eventually manage that task, but I've never heard of any digging machine that protected the sod like that.

I planted some roses in a lava rock bed. I had to scrape away the lava rocks, slit the weed barrier cloth, and dig holes the size of the root balls of the roses. I also had to space the roses evenly. After I'd planted the roses, I folded the slitted cloth back in place, and scraped the lava rocks back over it. It looks like the rose bushes have always been there. Then I built a deer proof fence out of scrap fencing neighbors had laying around, scrap lumber, making a hinge by leaving a bit of the wire fencing sticking out past the last post which I screwed to a piece of plywood. I put a cabinet handle on the back side of the plywood and stretched a bungie cord from the handle to the wire fence so the cord pulls the door shut. Deer won't figger that out, I think.

AI can't do any of that. None of what I do is threatened by AI taking over. I suppose a humanoid robot ran by AI could learn to use a shovel, vise grips, and a hammer, but I've never seen one do any of that. The government and other corporations were never consulted in any of that work.

As far as I can tell, I can just ignore all of the terrible things you mention above and I'll never notice their lack of participation in my life.

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ladyrebecca 6 months ago

We have some nostalgia here as well, mostly the elderly saying things were better in communism. For one thing, people tend to consider life was better when they were young. Obviously. One of the advantages of that era was certainty. You could be certain you'd get a job once you graduated, you could expect you'd be assigned a place to live and, since there was little to spend money on, you'd make it till the next paycheck. In a sense, communism accomplished its mission of making people equal. Equally poor.

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ericvancewalton 6 months ago

That's the impression I got from the Bald and Bankrupt episodes. It was people looking back to the past with the rose-colored glasses.

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ladyrebecca 6 months ago

Speaking of freedom, you mentioned that channel was banned... The communists banned Western media... or tried to, at least. After the war in Ukraine started, I follow Russian news on Telegram. If anything, it's good to see their point of view. I am aware it's also propaganda, but I find it more imaginative :))

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ericvancewalton 6 months ago

The channel is still active but he's no longer able to travel in Russia. He's banned from the country for life. I bet it is interesting to hear the other side of the story. I've done that consistently with US domestic news since 2016, I listen to both sides of the extreme. You can usually be pretty sure the truth can be found somewhere in the middle. : )

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valued-customer 6 months ago

Very insightful post.

"You might avoid charges, but do you dare lose your livelihood?"

I did exactly that every time I ever was employed, and in the 1980s became almost continually self-employed with occasional attempts to be officially an employee, which have always ended unsatisfactorily. My problem is that I'm a hopeless romantic, and keep forgiving my true love, which is serving my people. Working for corporations is a perversion of society, and my last attempt ended with me resigning in less than two months.

Hopefully, I've learned THIS TIME. LOL (doubt).

Thanks!

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ladyrebecca 6 months ago

I became aware of this problem after 9/11 and especially in 2003, at the start of the Iraq war. I was appalled by what was happening, but had to tow the line at the newspaper I was working for. For the most part, at least. I could not afford to lose my job, not as a single mother barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. It's called presstitution...

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valued-customer 6 months ago

Every job I've ever had has gotten in the way of making money. I have to be at the employers place of business the whole day, and all the wheeling and dealing is happening while I'm slinging hash, gutting fish, or bucking and limbing. It's even worse now that I focus on goodwill rather than fiat compensation, because doing good deeds tends to require me to be available when people need help, and if I'm driving a cab or feeding cattle I'm away from where they need me.

This is probably all cope, tbh. I'm psychologically unsuited to working for an employer. That's likely to be the underlying cause of my congenital entrepreneurship.

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