Don't Sweat The Small Stuff

[Lightbulb]

I've just been out for an intense bicycle ride and my nerves are thrumming with an endorphine high.

Outside there is a sunset smeared across the heavens which looks like a cosmological entity has dashed an intricate cocktail against the sky. There are more colours in one band of glory up there than either of my eyes have seen in their entire lives. Las Pyrénees, capped with dustings of snow and barely visible through a fine mist which is settling as dusk approaches seem to be sketched freehand against the skyline. In contrast to the endless bands of sunlight behind them, they have bruised blue-black and recede into two dimensional abstractions of themselves.

The mist is approaching across the ground, enveloping humps and hills as it snakes its way onwards. The folds in the earth are taking on characteristics of Japanese watercolours, dark irregular lines obscuring lighter, greyer, wraith-like hills looming further behind. And so it goes.

Even as I'm writing this, the last of the sun's rays are receding behind the horizon, leaving a formless fan of deep red behind, like a gush of blood against the darkening sky.

The brighter of the stars have appeared, and a gibbous moon swells unexpectedly large in a sky the colour of deep Greek seas.

Everything looks intricate and toy-like from up here. Trees are barely larger than the hairs on my arm. Lights from houses, twinkling in the last of the heat rising from the earth, could be stars fallen to the ground. The rare car racing the roads is nothing more than a lone blood cell inching its way through a capillary.

Cities are bullshit.

Politicians are transparent.

Wars are infinitesimal.

We are eternal.

[Mudflap]

<FONT COLOR="Orange">Now how the fuck do you expect me to come up with a smart ass reply to THAT? </FONT c>

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If you build it, they will come.

[Sirus]

That's cool.

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That's not a tool........that's a brick!

[D_I]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Mudflap:
<FONT COLOR="Orange">Now how the fuck do you expect me to come up with a smart ass reply to THAT? </FONT c>[/quote]

Exactly. WTF Lightbulb?

Nice mental imagery, BTW. Thanks.

[bowmore]

Nice Lightbulb. I love that dichotomy of seperation and connection to the world that comes in the high country.


selah.

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That amber liquor that not woman, not children but only hunters drank.

[Mr. Snrub]

Cities could kick your ass, mountainboy

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[Lightbulb]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Cities could kick your ass, mountainboy[/quote]

Hehe, Snrubby. That's exactly the sort of superficial, indolent nonsense that was one of the reasons which prompted me to leave the city I was born in and in which I lived most of my life.

I tried a few others. Didn't like them much. In the brief interludes I spent away from cities I began to discern a low-grade permanent physical and mental depression which I had endured mainly because I hadn't even known I was suffering it. One of the symptoms for me was an lazy mind and a prediliction for responding in a glib manner to anything which might otherwise require a bit of effort to do the stimulus justice.

I finally realised that it wasn't my society that was bothering me, or the era, or the constant barrage of global abuse that humanity seems delighted to wreak upon itself; it was an entire self-inflicted state of mind endured by a species which spent hundreds of thousands of years making its way down from the trees, adapting to plains-based living and then, in the flickering of a few thousand, packing itself into filthy, ill-evolving city-states in which people intentionally lock themselves in tiny boxes and fear each other.

So I left. It was like giving up smoking, heroin and fast food all at once. Now I can watch the sun make its way through the sky. The hour of the day is less important and even the Gregorian calender is less restrictive. I don't have pulmonary congestion any more and best of all, people look you in the eye when they talk to you. And when they do talk to you, they're actually interested in what you say.

I go back all the time, for work. I'll never get over the expressions of bewilderment and sly trepidation in people's faces, the suspicion in their eyes when you meet their gaze, the sheer fragility of their spirit that all the lines and angles of the concrete have shattered.

Edit: Pulmo-, not pulmu-!

[This message has been edited by Lightbulb (edited 02-04-2001).]

[Mr. Snrub]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Lightbulb:
<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Cities could kick your ass, mountainboy[/quote]

Hehe, Snrubby. That's exactly the sort of superficial, indolent nonsense that was one of the reasons which prompted me to leave the city I was born in and in which I lived most of my life.

I tried a few others. Didn't like them much. In the brief interludes I spent away from cities I began to discern a low-grade permanent physical and mental depression which I had endured mainly because I hadn't even known I was suffering it. One of the symptoms for me was an lazy mind and a prediliction for responding in a glib manner to anything which might otherwise require a bit of effort to do the stimulus justice.

I finally realised that it wasn't my society that was bothering me, or the era, or the constant barrage of global abuse that humanity seems delighted to wreak upon itself; it was an entire self-inflicted state of mind endured by a species which spent hundreds of thousands of years making its way down from the trees, adapting to plains-based living and then, in the flickering of a few thousand, packing itself into filthy, ill-evolving city-states in which people intentionally lock themselves in tiny boxes and fear each other.

So I left. It was like giving up smoking, heroin and fast food all at once. Now I can watch the sun make its way through the sky. The hour of the day is less important and even the Gregorian calender is less restrictive. I don't have pulmonary congestion any more and best of all, people look you in the eye when they talk to you. And when they do talk to you, they're actually interested in what you say.

I go back all the time, for work. I'll never get over the expressions of bewilderment and sly trepidation in people's faces, the suspicion in their eyes when you meet their gaze, the sheer fragility of their spirit that all the lines and angles of the concrete have shattered.

Edit: Pulmo-, not pulmu-!

[This message has been edited by Lightbulb (edited 02-04-2001).][/quote]

Weird - i get nervous when i'm surrounded by nature. It's just so - inefficient and unnaccountable. You just can't reason with it! And it's too bright outside of the smog layer.

City bwah, born and bred, and damn proud of it, you goddamn hick.

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[Minimaul]

I live in Alaska . Enough said. I do hate it here though. But I also hate big cities.

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[Koliedrus]

Dammit! I had a reply all set up nice and cozy in my head but Minimaul's sig gave me a fucking hardon and blew my train of thought!

Thanks a lot ya Eskimo.

Oh wait....

Hey! I just realized something...

Erection = Good

[Poteen]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Koliedrus:

Erection = Good [/quote]

Only if you have somewhere to put it! http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/biggrin.gif

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[This message has been edited by Poteen (edited 02-05-2001).]

[Mr. Snrub]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Poteen:
<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Koliedrus:

Erection = Good [/quote]

Only if you have somewhere to put it! http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/biggrin.gif

[/quote]

Or someone to hold it through the hard times...


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[Dog Breath]

Isn't it ironic how all junkies become self righteous after breaking their habit seeing themselves more enlightened that others whom never were not foolish enough to become addicted? Ex smokers are much more inflammatory towards smokers than "non smokers".
Light Bulb, I am happy that you have "found" yourself and yes it is nice to be out in nature to a limited degree. Your animosity towards Snrub is laughable.
I suppose your home is a log cabbin hewn from the local timbers with an axe you fashioned yourself. Your bicycle is obviously one of those Flintstone jobs with stone wheels. Do you at least have a garden?
It is ironic how you look down on the part of society that makes your current existence possible. Living somewhere beautiful is great! Thinking that you are removed from mainstream society in any significant way is ludicrous.
Please send your response to the local library by pigeon so that someone in the "City" may post it for you.

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Woof.
If it's so sick, why are you laughing?
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[Koliedrus]

Heel, boy. Man make pretty words. Pee pee on his footy-wooties is a no no! Yes ums are!

Go get me a beer.


http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/wink.gif

Woof!

[Dog Breath]

I fouled his footwear for being pretentious in his reply to Snrub. The origin of this thread was indeed masterful and packed with imagery. I did enjoy. http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/biggrin.gif

Marking Kol's shoe. Hey what's the rolled up news paper for? http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/frown.gif

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Woof.
If it's so sick, why are you laughing?
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[Lightbulb]

Animosity, DB?

After being threatened (humorously, I assumed) with having my ass kicked by a conglomeration of concrete, glass and steel, surely a hostile reply on my part - had I not seen the humour - would have been closer to the 'fuck you, go eat a dick' responses that proliferate most forums.

Best I can distill from that second post of mine was 'Come on Snrubby, you can do better than that - here's some more to get your teeth into'; and indeed he can, and did. Now I know more about Snrubby's take on life and can discuss with him the relative merits of unaccountable, uncontrolled natural surroundings and the pedicured realities of a city environment.

So rather than descend into light-hearted abuse, which you wouldn't have picked me up on, DB; because that's a safe retreat and doesn't require any effort; I light-heartedly abuse with a few more words and continue the discussion beyond a sentence or two.

Is that pretension? I'm hoping to avoid the pitfalls of personal attacks which are so easily fallen into when discussing subjects on a global human scale.

I thought people were here because they wanted to converse in more depth than the trails of droll one liners that dangle from seed posts which run along the lines of 'So, people; leaded fuel; Good Or Bad?'

If we all cower in an environment where it is a crime to attempt to stretch ones mind and vocabulary for fear of derision, we might as well fuck off back to another forum and yibber at one another endlessly. That's why I don't bother even to attempt meaningful discussions on that other forum.

You're right. I am in no way removed from mainstream society, whatever that might be. In considerably more populated parts of the world than the Western technocratic minority, mainstream society subsists off the land by arable farming, and numbers of people living this life far exceed those living in the First World and in cities. City life is only mainstream when it surrounds you on a daily basis; however most of those who operate the remnants of the 20th century media machine do so at the behest of city society, so it is natural that cities have the loudest voices.

I'm certainly a product of the city. Born, raised, lived there all my life. As I said, I go back regularly to work. When I do, everyone I speak to fantasises about leaving. They pound away on running machines in gyms because running in the street exposes them to pollutants. They are bombarded constantly with hyper-real imagery of irreally beautiful people and exotic, harmonious locations when everything around the picture's edge is drab grey. Of course there are many cities in the world, but I'm talking of some of the most powerful. I'm a Londoner myself.

Of course cities are fantastic, kaleidoscopic melting pots of culture, art, science and so forth, as will be anywhere that concentrated clusters of humanity congregate. But why big square lumps? Why boxes overlooking concrete roads? Where did this model arise? I've visited communities attempting to shy clear of these standard models and they are fascinating. Not better; different.

We've only been surrounded by these structures for, evolutionarily speaking, the flickering of an eye; what on earth does that do to us at a deep psychological level? Our eyes are evolved to a rest-focus of thousands of yards, yet there are few if any spaces like that in built up areas. I'm fascinated by what that does to our psycho-neurology at an unconscious level.

Why aren't cities carefully cultivated forests, grown on the same scale as their concrete counterparts, still containing high rise buildings but with curves like Gaudí architecture? Much of the phenotypical construction of cityscapes must obviously follow the technological revolution and the order in which leaps of our understanding were applied to our surroundings. Haven't we learned a little since then?

As far as scoffing at the parts of society making my existence possible, I don't know. Most of the world operates in order to make the lives of city dwellers possible. Food is transported half way across the world to feed cities. It's grown in rural areas. Electricity generation is confined to the edges of populated areas. Oil is produced and refined from the areas in which it is used most. On a global scale, energy consumption (and that includes food and fuel) of cities is grotesquely disproportionate to the rest of the earth.

But it seems as history progresses that producers and consumers of various goods; staples of existence and luxuries; are becoming increasingly intertwined. Yet financial power is, at the same time, becoming increasingly concentrated into the hands and control of a few, and more abstractly, being concentrated in cities.

DB, the derisive tone of your post doesn't befit you, particularly when you are leaping to defend someone who is quite capable of doing so himself, but especially when it was unnecessary. Nearly every post I've read of yours is thought-provoking and well reasoned. I don't want to do battle with the morally enraged mask of the Attack Dog when the Clever Canine is hiding behind it, ready for mutual intellectual evolution.

Can't we all just get along?

Where's Taffy when you need her?

[Lightbulb]

Oh yeah. And to follow Kol's advice from the Mirror Mirror thread.

Lightbulb, you dick.

Cities are the natural evolutionary direction of the human race. For centuries we have been nomad tribes, hunter-gatherers whose lives are continually at the mercy of the elements and other, war-mongering groups.

Cities evolved primarily as a defence against attacking hoards and the naturally enlarged and enveloped the encampments of temporary structures which surrounded them. Take Barcelona as an example. For centuries it was a fortified enclosure, little different from a swollen castle community, before the city elders decreed it legal for permanent additions to be made beyond what are now the old city walls in the Barra Gothica. Since then it has swollen to several times its original size, increased the trade and tourism of its ports and rail routes and is recognised as one of the more prominent flourishing centres of business and the arts in Europe. None of that would have been possible had it remained a nugget of itself.

Cities will spread like a technological mould on the surface of the earth. And what do some moulds make? Penicilline. Cheese. Wines. The emergence of cities indicates we are on the brink of a remarkable evolutionary change in our species history. The concentration of human resources and human intelligence, and the freedom which the modern, First World lifestyle brings permits people to dedicate more of their lives than was ever possible before to their specialised subjects.

Technological advancements and the sharing of the knowledge gleaned from these leaps is proliferating increasingly rapidly. The options open to an urban society are astronomical. I can walk down my local high street and eat food from a dozen different countries; buy clothes from a hundred different designers. Whole libraries of books are available to me and, if I have the finance, I can equip myself for almost any endeavor I choose for my life.

Need a computer? A five minute tube ride away. Want to produce digital films? The technology is available for purchase one street away, and the facilities to edit and distribute only a short walk from there.

Living out in the wilderness is fine if you want a monastic seclusion from reality, but why do people flock to cities? BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE THERE! Endless stimulation, new friends, sexual adventure and just, well hell, the natural high of being part of humanity. Feeling it flow around you, never knowing whether the next pair of eyes you catch will be those of a genius with a hearty sense of humour or just some nut who wants to talk about how God can save you from the forthcoming apocalypse.

Variety. That's what it's all about.

And lots of cinemas.

And theatres.

And clubs, dammit.

[Lightbulb]

Edit: Double post, you moron.

Shut up.

No, you shut up.

Don't make me hurt you.

[This message has been edited by Lightbulb (edited 02-05-2001).]

[Wise Womcat]

I tried my hardest to read all of that...honestly I did. And then my eyes fell out. Wow that was long, and while I didn't read more than a quarter of it, I agree with you on one of the things I saw. I enjoy it when people put more than one little line like "Right on"...doesn't the fact that you aren't arguing in a reply evidence enough that you are in support of it?

As for the rest of the post, I enjoyed the country life. My favorite thing was how everyone looked you in the eye and would say hello to you even though they didn't know who you were. As far as the viewpoint of cities being worse than when we lived in trees (yes, I know you don't mean it like that), that's just crazy. It's the big cities that make our world better. So what if it also produced smog...sooner or later they might make a way to instantly get rid of the smog. The whole point of a highly concentrated population (city) is that we don't have to send a postman 2 days to deliver our newest research. Cities get things done quickly.

Just out of curiosity, did you build your own house? Or did some city dweller?

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You're entitled to your own opinion....even though it's WRONG!

[Dog Breath]

Hey Light bulb.
I won't make a point by point reply. Suffice to say, your thread beginning was killer. I enjoyed it.
Was I defending Snrub? Not really it was just an excuse to make a comment.
Was I slamming you?
*insert same answer*

It was an excuse to make a point about the irony that exists in this context. A spam war was never my intent. I am sorry if my reply seemed harsh it was really aimed in fun. Most of my posts are designed to make people laugh. In this case more for others to laugh at than you. I found humor in someone telling a tale of a long bicycle ride (trendy city activity) and in the next breath wax poetic about the simple life. What I envisioned was a tall thin man riding a $1200 18 speed bike clad in spandex drinking evion from a bike bottle speeding through tall pines with his ultra aerodynamic helmet whistling in the breese. I saw you pulling up to a 2 story A-frame "log cabin" checking your pulse with your wafer thin Rolex. Striding to the porch and looking over the greenery and saying how nice it is to get back to nature. A quick shower later finds you at your computer posting the story on the Hyper Tribe. http://www.thehypertribe.net/ubb/biggrin.gif

No offence meant it just hit me funny that's all.

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Woof.
If it's so sick, why are you laughing?
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[Lightbulb]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR> ... tall thin man riding a $1200 18 speed bike clad in spandex ... 2 story A-frame "log cabin" checking your pulse with your wafer thin Rolex .. quick shower later finds you at your computer posting the story on the Hyper Tribe.[/quote]

Mwa haha! DB, you swine. That made me spit coffee over my keyboard. I see where you were coming from, now.

Hehe. Closer to the reality is a dumpy lunatic riding a cheap Chinese import. I'm entirely the wrong shape for Spandex; besides the dogs would chase me. No watch either. And the endorphine high was due to the pain the unnatural exertion elicited in my pathetic musculature.

Don't suspect my musings about cities to be anti-technology. I love technology. I wouldn't have a job without it. No log-cabin dwelling, Unabomber in the making here. (I'll leave that to Rogue - *ducks*.) There are of course a myriad shades between city and isolation, I'm just erring on the less populated side.

I'm just fascinated in the structure and form that seems to have been adopted by city planners. So unimaginative.

This, however:

<IMG SRC="http://www.auroville.org/images/galaxtop.jpg" border=0>

.. is an experimental city in Southern India called Auroville, which was founded in the 70's. How's that for alternative town planning? It's an arial shot of the city.

Womcat: I live in a section of a 16th century castle, which in fact is a proto-typical city I suppose. It was built by land-owning nobility who all killed themselves off in personal skirmishes over the last few hundred years. The farmers have carried on regardless.

Edit: Emphasis, commas and the word 'however'.

[This message has been edited by Lightbulb (edited 02-05-2001).]

[Mr. Snrub]

Orright, i'll try being long-winded for a change:

I am a total city boy. I have no desire to leave the city. There is nothing i hate more than camping. When i go on holidays, i like to go to reasonably large towns. I've been this way for as long as i can remember - not entirely sure why, but here's a vague attempt at explaining it, i've never been able to explain it to myself to my satisfaction:

The reason i like cities is that they are environments made by humans for humans. So what, you say, this is true of a studio apartment or a wood hut out in Alaska. But cities are not designed merely for human habitation, they are designed for human habitation on a large scale. Cities are required for concentrated human population; and concentrated human population is required economically for many of the amenities i enjoy. I like my stadiums, i like my supermarkets, specialty stores, and i do enjoy the feeling and noise of being part of something that is both greater than myself and intriguingly chaotic.
I don't care about clean air, which is odd considering how highly allergic i am (the downside of having a psychotic immune system). I do occasionally feel the need to be alone, but it is sufficient for me to retreat to my room. I have never felt pressed in around a large amount of other people, i have never felt the need to escape and be isolated from my fellow humans. I have experienced the simple beauty of nature, but it is not for me - i like the chaotic, human-created beauty (and ugliness) you can only find in all its diversity in cities.

Strangely enough, most of the people i know feel the same way. But then, the people i talk to tend to be people very much like me.

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