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Feeling Out of Sync with the Current Time Period

Astrolabe

Astrolabe

New Member
Forgive me if this has been covered before. I have been exploring threads and couldn't find something that covered this.

I mentioned this lightly in my personal thread but I have always felt, from a VERY early age, a disconnect with modern culture.

I grew up in the 80s. I was born in 1978 so for me, I got to see consumerism at its height, the age of me, of greed, of yuppies, but mostly it was the real point at which the entire world started to really urbanize. Huge cities became much huger. The look of everything changed very quickly.

I felt despair from early on looking at big cities and the population explosion. I always think in my head of a simpler time, when the Earth was younger and not filled with pollution and in spite of the things about this time period which better humanity (a better system of international law, medicine, transport, skyrocketing amounts of scientific discovery) I can't help but always feel that longing on some level. This caused me depression as early as the ages of 8 and 9. There is a constant confusion in my mind, expecting things to be like they were decades ago or even centuries. There is an expectation. When I watch historical movies it often feels like the look of things is "right" and there are times I watch them to relax because the look of historical clothing relieves me of anxiety.

I know there are good things about all the changes that have happened but I feel inundated by it sometimes. Sometimes I understand it, or think I do, and then other times my mind rebels and just wants to scream over the destructiveness of the 20th century, how mass poverty and depleted resources, water consumption, and mass disease (like malaria) are at an all time high and it pains me because hunger and poverty always make me mad. They are the result of poor planning and greed. Someone benefits immensely for every child you see going hungry.

I know these problems have always existed but they are being pushed to their limits. I know I remember times where I really didn't worry about these things, and even the oceans I have always loved from the beginning of time are now being ruined, coral reefs are dying and the ph balance of the oceans are changing and that could result in the loss of most ocean life within a hundred years.

It's so painful because I want to go back, even to lifetimes filled with horror because the earth had balance. Now everything gets more and more complex but human greed is heightening; its stronger than ever now.

Does anyone else find themselves rebelling on the inside? There is this utter dichotomy to my thoughts. I enjoy the benefits of the modern age but I long for a world without the current horrors (even if it was never free of horrors).

No time is perfect. But I still feel "out of sync". I still feel uncomfortable. I look at the hugeness of human reach, with the burgeoning numbers of people crowding the Earth and in spite of those who say overpopulation is not a problem I cringe because there used to be more for your average human to see in terms of new things, in terms of limits there was so much out there, so much to see we hadn't seen, so much unknown. We were once free, ranging over the Earth and I feel I was there, back even in the age of monolith builder cultures. There were no borders. There was no environmental crisis to worry about. Just endless, boundless mountains, rivers, and jungles to explore, with all of their wonderful and horrible dangers and beauty.

Does anyone else actually feel the loss of this? Do you know what I mean?
 
I know exactly what you mean. Everything you said.


I miss the sense of exploration and freedom to just go and make a new start for yourself without such a high risk of your past finding you, or without having to let the government know what you're doing. Someone, somewhere, will know who you really are. A century ago, if you had the courage, you could say "see ya!" to everyone and cross the country, performing odd jobs wherever you could to pay your way. Eventually, you'd find what you wanted.


Now today, you need to fill out a application, give a social security number, phone number, address, email, etc. just to get a job making friggin' sandwiches! I have to laugh at how official and important some things have been made out to be in our modern era.
 
Hi Astrolabe, yes... me too! You could not have said it better. I'm a generation or two ahead of you. I remember a carefree childhood in the late 50's and early 60's. I could walk all the way across town without a care of kidnappers, brutes and other evils of today. It was a Norman Rockwell life of simple joys. Slowly it began to change, first it was practice drills of hiding under our desk from atom bombs... then they shot President Kennedy... and the world, to me, took a turn... A turn into greed, war and destruction. Vietnam was on the news everyday, along with starvation in Bangladesh, Africa and other places. YES, I felt your sadness back then.


Today I see the industrial destruction of our planet at such an alarming rate, that I do not know how we will ever survive. Take a look at any satellite image of the earth... look at my state Kansas, the high plains, the prairie of America... go look, see what we are doing to it. The great grasslands are almost entirely gone, replaced by center pivot irrigation systems sucking water from an aquifer that is nearly depleted! The aquifer was created hundreds of thousands of years ago when the Great Inland Sea covered Kansas. What took millions of years to build up we are draining in less then 100 years. Why? Greed.


Oh I could go on and on... but like you I usually end up yearning for the simpler days of past lives. I don't have the answer... to me it is now a matter of a spiritual change. I hate to be a dooms-dayer but certainly the current trajectory lives little hope... something has got to pop sooner or later. Hopefully the wisdom gathered from our current and past lives will have some positive cosmic effect in our future lives.


I'm reminded that the simplest and most basic form of change is right here before us... in this current moment and time... in our own simple worlds... we can make a difference. It might be as simple as stopping along the roadside and picking up trash... it might be teaching our children the value of compassion in real time... it might be simple prayer.


Tman
 
Hi astrolobe. I do agree with you and know others the same. Someone I used to work with was born in the 80's but really like 1970's music. I think he might have died quite young and reincarnated where he would have been at in his pl. He was way above his years in personality and the people he mixed with.


I sometimes think it must have been better years ago without the stresses of modern life but the internet has it's us & Id miss my cappucinos
 
I read something online that rang true. They were talking about the show Mad Men and lamenting about how it would soon be ruined as the show entered the 1960's then the 1970's.


I was born in 1961 in an area that was always a bit behind the times. It was a safer time, a simpler time. Compassion and love much more than greed and desire.


Supper meant the family around the table eating and talking. Not even a party line when the phone finally arrived. Spending time and playing with siblings instead of an XBox or Playstation. No instant gratification, knowing the joy of working for something and cherishing it when you finally attained whatever it was you hoped for.


Sad, so very sad that is gone.
 
I feel the as same astrolabe.


For me it's cloudy gloomy days I feel myself


drifting to another time.


I must grew up in gloomy state like washington


or maine or something.?


I don't like this time at all. Too much of our soul


is being taken away.


I can't stand bright sun:grr:


And yes the world is a tailspin.


But like someone said the Veil is lifting.
 
I can relate to this too.


Yes...the 20th century saw many hugely useful inventions - the contraceptive pill, etc, meaning women at least have total control over our fertility for the first time in recorded history is a HUGE blessing and I have often given thanks personally for not being forced into a position where I had to have children like it or lump it. The shorter workweek than ordinary people had had for centuries and paid retirement is also a huge blessing.


We are now going backwards on that workweek front - with many employees being forced into doing overtime like it or no (and often unpaid at that) under threat of losing their jobs otherwise and retirement age is steadily being pushed up and up. It is so saddening to see these gains being eroded.


The only positive thing I see coming in the near future is men also having full control of their fertility (eg the male pill) and no longer at the mercy of the type of woman who decides to stage an "accidental" pregnancy on them.


I hate the increase in traffic, planes, pollution and most of all the population increase. The thing is that many of us will hate these things because of having spent many lives to date on Earth when the population/government surveillance/etc was much lower than it is now and therefore don't and never will regard current levels of population etc as normal and acceptable.


I feel sorry for people in the future with the enormous level of government surveillance that there will be compared to what we have now even. Already there are prototype inventions there being worked on to be able to tell what emotions and even thoughts people have and you can bet these will be justified by that comment "If you have nothing to hide - then you have nothing to fear" and, when these inventions are perfected, I cant see any Government being able to resist using them against their own people (even those of us who don't have anything to hide - but just want the privacy in our own minds to think our own thoughts still without anyone else knowing what those thoughts are unless we choose to share them). I believe it might also prove possible in the not that distant future to be able to control other peoples bodies remotely (I have an idea I might have read about a prototype invention being worked on there too....). These things once seemed inconceivable and are definitely horrifying thoughts. Its bad enough to know that whatever urban location you are walking round in there may well be surveillance cameras there watching you (isn't there some statistic somewhere that says that we - ie British people - are caught on camera round about 300 times a day on average?:eek:). That's the trouble - these cameras are supposed to be there to record "illicit doings" of any description - but the rest of us end up getting filmed as well.


A generation or two from now privacy as a concept may well be something that only exists in history books and the memories of the oldest people.
 
I don't think the U.S. has quite as much surveillance, but I'm sure security cameras in businesses mostly go unobserved. I live in a small university town in California, and the city installed a "red light camera" at an intersection near one of the high schools. There was such a public outcry, that it was removed. I think I haven't posted in this thread before because I see so many exciting things about modern life. Maybe I have been poor in all my lives, but when I got my first apartment, I thought about how wonderful it was to have all that clean, empty space to myself. My mother told me many stories about people in Arkansas in the 1930's dying at home from medical problems, and only a country doctor to ease their suffering. I have often thought about the wonders we all experience daily that no king, or emperor could ever have possessed. There is "magic" in our world. Of course there are serious issues to be addressed, but I wake up every day, grateful for modern hygiene. I have been able to smell some of the people in my past life memories! Of course, the past had good things, but if all our modern wonders were to vanish, we would "remember" our current lives next time around, and be puzzled, and nostalgic. Can you imagine? "I used to communicate with people around the world daily on a little screen, and zip about in a metal box with wheels!" I won't bore you all by going on and on, but it was the filth, poverty, and degradation of my past lives that made me so grateful for this one.
 
BriarRose said:
I don't think the U.S. has quite as much surveillance, but I'm sure security cameras in businesses mostly go unobserved. I live in a small university town in California, and the city installed a "red light camera" at an intersection near one of the high schools. There was such a public outcry, that it was removed.
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But we are getting there. Next time you are stopped at a traffic light look up and see if there is a surveillance camera on one of the light poles. We had the "red light cameras" here but when it was pointed out that the cameras were installed where the city would make the most money and not where the most accidents occur they were finally removed.

BriarRose said:
My mother told me many stories about people in Arkansas in the 1930's dying at home from medical problems, and only a country doctor to ease their suffering.
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Without modern medicine and health insurance I'm sure I would be dead by now. If this were 50 years ago many of us here would be dead by now. When I was in high school in the 1960's the wrestling coach at my school died suddenly from a heart attack. That was not an unusual thing. A few years later one of my PE coaches in college also died from a sudden heart attack. That was a very common thing for people in their 40's and 50's. Many people don't know this, but Medicare is responsible for many of the medical advances in the U.S. The researchers know that thanks to Medicare (and the government) their patients (customers) will be able to pay for all of this.
 
One *huge* problem I have with modern times is that everything is so dis-connected. People are disconnected from the land, from their food, from each other ... people might be so involved with texting somebody else, they might never notice who they're physically sitting next to! I grew up in a town where all the kids played outside and everyone knew their neighbors. No one locked their doors. We pooled our resources with neighbors to get firewood for the winter, play on the trampoline, etc. It's a much lonelier existence today, esp. for older people who aren't tech-savvy.
 
With everything good, there is something bad. We can't make everybody happy.


The better medicine is, the higher our population becomes and the less resources we have.


The better surveillance becomes, the less privacy.


The better technology becomes, we become progressively more detached from one another.


The world never has been and never will be a perfect place. I'm sure there are many people in the world today who are living miserable lives, but there last one a century ago was wonderful simply because of whatever there situation may have been. It's all a matter of circumstance.
 
In the decades I lived, there was one thing still


place, common sense which becoming like a


extinct animal. Now of these days.


Sure, every decade had it's problems


but family remained the most important


in peoples lives. Now we tweet or text our kids


to let them know dinners ready?cover face
 
Jody said:
People are disconnected from the land, from their food, from each other ...
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This is so very true. The "disconnect" is one of our biggest problems. I have tried to eat "seasonal" foods, establish family traditions, and observe the four seasons in So Cal, which doesn't have them! Wicca is appealing because of the celebration of seasonal rituals, and the appreciation for natural cycles. I realize that Alastair Crowley pretty much invented an ancient religion that never existed, but it has some lovely bits.
 
Thanks for your very interesting replies, everyone.


I think that the surveillance issue is one that didn't even cross my mind but yes, privacy has pretty much been thrown out the window. It is next to impossible to just start over and take say, another name and wash your past away. You could do that as little as a hundred years ago. Few people don't have an extensive and public trail of their own images these days.


One of the things you guys brought up that really got to me was the jobs issue, and the need for identification. I also resent that a lot. In the past one could do odd jobs for pay and there wasn't the need for income taxes, which basically force you to report everything to the government. It seems preposterous to me to do this for small jobs and for people that don't make a lot of money. And just the sheer number of tax laws. It's so unnecessary.


I'll add to that the utter complexity of the financial system. Banks have been increasingly complex since their real establishment of power came about in the 1600's, along the stock exchange, but the last century has seen it bloom into spheres of complexity that only mathematicians and rocket scientists can fully understand. Derivatives, equity, student loans, hedge funds, the sheer volume of it all is astounding. I've been attempting to teach myself about these subjects over the past few years and I am constantly astounded that these things rule all of our lives.


Not to mention, money bought more before. You could get more for your paycheck. If current money and wages was worth what they had in the 60s, minimum wage would be around $10 an hour. And they didn't have our debt concerns.


There is a deep part of me that knows in my last life I really didn't have any concerns about money, my concerns were entirely revolving around my work. The opposite is true for me in this life and I know I'm not alone...we're entering an age of scarcity.


I think that my "I can't believe this exists" moments when I look at the bullet trains I've traveled on, or jet planes, or medical advances that I've witnessed are truly inspiring, and jarring. The world becomes more unfamiliar every year...
 
Astrolabe, I am sure that you know about cyclic nature of our world. So I hope, the humanity will return to the pure environment and will have sufficient resources in future. We will see this in one of our next lives)))))
 
This feeling gets me down, too. I remember driving across country when I was young and being upset at all the power lines.
 
Well said. And well said Tman! I agree.


There are (no doubt) benefits to this modern time we are living in. But for me there is, and probably always will be, a longing for simpler times of a bygone age....I hope we as a people can find balance in the future.
 
Older souls will always seek simpler lives... But unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about the modern age.
 
Sad, but true.


I don't relieve a life during civil war.


the mid 20 century would be fine.


Sometimes it feels like stranger in a strange land.


At times I can't believe I live this what I call


new dark ages. it's be coined before .


I said back in 1990's to friends.
 
The mid-twentieth century had it's advantages, but children lived with a great deal of fear. When, I was five, and heard about the nuclear bomb, I reacted with terror and disbelief. I remember living surrounded by bigotry towards other races, religions, and gender-preferences. It wasn't nice. I remember love from my long-ago lives, but I also remember being cold, hungry, dirty, uneducated, desperate, and hopeless. It was love that got us through the long-dead past, love that sustained us through the twentieth century, and love that will save us now. It's one of the constants of the human experience, and it has to be great enough to outweigh the negatives.
 
I am a little late in the game with a reply to this, but I also feel this way. I was born in 1983, and grew up loving technology. Now that I'm older, I feel sad regarding the state of the world and the big RUSH we all have to be in. I have trouble focusing on work, as I just wish to grow as a person, as a spirit, as consciousness. Alas, we must chase that evil dollar. I hate money. It has gotten out of hand these past few decades. All this stress has made everything harder.

I always think in my head of a simpler time, when the Earth was younger and not filled with pollution and in spite of the things about this time period which better humanity (a better system of international law, medicine, transport, skyrocketing amounts of scientific discovery) I can't help but always feel that longing on some level.
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I was sharing a similar thought with my husband a few weeks back, and I had to stop myself and remember that I may have felt like this in past lifetimes also, that I may have longed for simpler lives, or times. I also need to appreciate today, because there is a good chance that next time around may be even more of a whirlwind. I guess we won't know until we get there, but I'm sure there's a purpose for such rapid human growth. Only time will tell.


I just wanted to share that I know exactly how you feel, and that it's funny how we all tend to feel this way. Thanks for sharing.
 
I can relate to this so very well! I have always felt out of sync with this current time and with my family. I would love to go back to more simple times. Not necessarily one without our technology but a more simple time when people actually took the time to pay attention to the world in which they live. When life wasn't a constant rush hour or in a hurry. A more family oriented culture and naturalistic culture. Not necessarily tree hugging but more aware of farming and where their food comes from or how our actions have negatively affected our local and wordly environments. To be aware of the difference between what plants are nourishing and what are poisonous and how to survive in the wild or on their own. We are in an instant gratification culture and it would be nice if we could just slow down and put the life in our years and not the years in our life. Personally, I'd rather live off the land, farm, raise animals, and be able to relax and take it easy.People are over stressed and over worked and are dying younger from diseases of ill-lifestyles and diet/exercise. People are zombies to technology. Education has gone down hill and most students couldn't point out Afghanistan on a map. I miss the times when families ate together, spent time together, and took the time to be a family. I really could keep going but I'd only be lamenting for a time that I can't have anymore. These are just my observations of people and places.
 
Even if society in general won't slow down, have family dinners, and appreciate the good things, it doesn't mean that the individual can't. My generation's motto was "tune in, turn on, and drop out". Or so I think - time may have mixed the message. It sounds like we have some reincarnated "hippies" here! Find a way to survive financially, and live the life you want. We don't have to follow the other lemmings off the cliff. I tend to yearn for 1905, but I like many things about our world, and have hope for the future. The thing about modern life that bothers me the most is people being on the internet, and texting during theatrical performances.I just want to scream! When the light shines in my eyes, and distracts from the entertainment, I wonder why the person bothered to go to a play or a film. Just stay home, and watch puppies on You-tube, so I can watch Julius Caesar the way the Bard intended! Excuse me please - I apparently knew Christopher Marlowe, and take this personally. Theater was a new medium in his day, as TV was in mine!
 
It depends on your family and where you live. When you get away from large urban areas you can still find a slower pace, etc. Yesterday when I was driving home from Los Angeles I had extra time so I took some back roads. I was amazed at how many people were living in a semi-desolate rural area only about 30 minutes from the downtown area. Even horses, etc. And many families today think they have to have the kids involved in too many activities.
 
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