What do you call it when...

[darkemeralds]

What's the word for that state of mind where you can see the end of humanity coming, and you can feel the extreme similarity between humans and, say, ants? It's a kind of high, distant perspective that soars up away from the news of the day, shrugs about The Grand Ole Opry and sees the Gulf oil leak as a thin gray swirl on a vast ocean.

It makes it very hard to rediscover the fun of my hobbies or to feel the importance of my commitments, and even though riding my bike, for instance, has exactly the same power to trigger endorphins and get my heart rate up as it did last week, I can't quite remember the feeling an hour later.

Is it anomie? Existential angst? Nihilism?

Whatever it is, it seems to come from overexposure to news and ideas that I'm absolutely powerless to affect, and I need to come back down into the anthill, where my little perambulations and carryings of grains of sugar feel like they mean something, you know?

Comments

[kis]

I think the trick is to embrace the powerless and pointlessness. Feel the contingency and do it anyway, kind of thing.

See icon.

But it's a saddening frame of mind to be in, I know.

[darkemeralds]

You are so right! And better Sisyphus, with something to do, than, say, Tantalus, huh?

The trouble with this frame of mind is that when I'm in it, I think that all joys and pleasures are a form of self-deception, and that to get back to them I just need to fool myself again.

The more salient fact is that it's all body chemistry. Hormones and peptides and neurotransmitters = Reality. Or so I've observed. What possible difference could it make to the world whether I'm seeing the big, adult picture or just enjoying the little things? None, except to me. So I might as well be happy with my grain of sugar (or boulder) and enjoy watching the rather well-muscled naked guy pushing his ahead of me!

[kis]

Indeed!

I think all joys and pleasures probably are self-deception - but by the same token so are all worries and woes. We need to think ourselves into a situation where we take control of the interpretation, perhaps.

[darkemeralds]

Excellent point!

And I'm not sure about thinking ourselves into a situation so much as, say, eating or drinking or chatting or exercising ourselves into it.

Hm. I think I'll make another pot of coffee. Maybe go out and look at the sun for a few seconds. Get it while you can around here. I'm sure, now that I think of it, that a want of sunlight is playing a role in this state.

[kis]

I'm sure, now that I think of it, that a want of sunlight is playing a role in this state.

No wonder I'm more often in that kind of mood than most people then! :)

*admires the Austenesque rhythm of your sentence*

[darkemeralds]

It gets under a person's skin, that rhythm. I didn't even consciously realize I was doing it!

[executrix]

It's always been true that everybody was going to die sometime! And it wasn't Norman Vincent Peale who promised to reincarnate a petitioner's dead child if she could bring him some mustardseed from a house where nobody had ever died, it was Buddha.

If you get pleasure from causing massive oil spills, I'd say STOP IT! NOW! If, on the other hand, you get pleasure from things that harm no one and are actually good for you, then I think it's your contribution to reducing the amount of suffering in the world.

[darkemeralds]

I'm becoming quite attached to this metaphor of carrying big grains of sugar, actually! That is, where "sugar" does not equal some judgmental value of "bad for your teeth" or otherwise "evil".

Thank you for the perspective, too. I like to think that my pleasures, far from causing massive oil spills, are actually doing some little mite to prevent them, those pleasures being not especially petroleum-fueled.

[phil_v]

It's all a matter of perspective isn't it?

I'm kind of feeling the same way in regards to all the news and the events happening lately myself. We all need distractions to take the edge off that impending hammer 'o doom that seems to lurk in the back of our minds.

[darkemeralds]

Your icon is gorgeous! Hey! Maybe watching some Firefly would work.

Actually, I came home and watched an ep of Sarah Connor. Not that it isn't a bit hammer o' doomish itself, but it has a wonderful human message. And it's just good. It's got me refocused back in happy fandom where my mind does best.

[phil_v]

Thanks! I used one of the QMx Map of the Verse pics to make that one and I'm pretty sure that watching Firefly cures most ails. ;)

If you want to check out some TSCC vids after catching up on what you missed there's a community that Lithiumdoll (aka halycon_shift) set up a couple of years back that has a great selection - http://community.livejournal.com/scc_vids/

[darkemeralds]

Whoops. I need to not watch many of those! They're good, but spoilery since I'm still in S1.

Will return to it after a few more Netflix discs have come my way. Thank you for the link.

[lamentables]

I think you're being affected by the UK Pall of Gloom; sorry about that.

[darkemeralds]

Between ash and Conservatives, you could be right. I read about hung Parliaments last night. Conservative leader David Cameron, who didn't win that majority, but leads the party with the most votes declared his center-right party had earned the right to govern sounds a lot like George W. Bush claiming a "mandate" after his very questionable victory in 2004.

Why, oh why do the people vote against their own interests? I will never understand it.