I think so too! I think that can be true and we can still be 'pretty much the same’. Can it not? I thin the difference between us today, and us now… compared to the difference between any two peoples consciousnesses today - not that big a leap. Pretty much the same, but over all we’re more educated, but no less prejudiced. Not in our hearts I think.
We have not changed as much as say, our atmosphere has, in 10,000 years.
The main thing I’d say I disagree with is that there is much similarity between people at all, even today. We may be biologically similar (essentially the same), but two people living under the same roof can be literal opposites. I think this condition probably has been the same for a while.
Now, I believe in (or shall I say, give high odds to) things like karma, multidimensional reality and manifestation, and the continuity of consciousness beyond what we think of as physical death. shrug I have a pretty different perspective than most people I know. Us nondualists, just doing our thang…
I was trying to get extactly that across.
And one of those two people (Tim) may be about as far apart from the other (John), as John is from (Grunt) the cavemen of 10,000 years ago. Neat ideas you got there nicky.
Me too.
I think we are all one being. When I pass I start over at another time and place. Maybe earlier, maybe later. But everyone i meet is me before, or me after, this go-round.
A worldview that makes compassion for self and for others the same practice, I hope.
This is A LOT more interesting than Coal and Orange Julius. If you would like to share more on this tangent, we should open a new thread though!
Pleasure speaking with you if not. 
I’ve actually been thinking about starting a nondualism thread, so yes, we will get to that.
Not really, unless you want to be pedantic and say that cash registers at Walmart and McDonald’s are technically computers these days. It’s easy to assume because most of us here work with a computer on our desks that such office work is what “normal people” do, but that’s not the majority of work by far.
An excellent recent book on the decline of the blue collar working class and the fiasco of the retraining panacea is Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story about the 2008 GM plant closing in Janesville, WI.
The American colonies were, yes. The USA did not have the support of powerful royals, anywhere, when it was founded. We had France, and they had killed their royals and scared the rest of em real good
The French Revolution happened after the American one (and was in part inspired by it, and some people like Lafayette and Thomas Paine took part in both). France was a monarchy when it supported the American Revolution, and people like Lafayette were nobles.
Turns out Trump apparently agrees with you both (or at least did back in July, who knows what he thinks now):
from here: Full transcript: Trump’s Wall Street Journal interview - POLITICO
TRUMP: We’ll have to see. You can call him. But I said, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success, OK? And he’s called me and he says, you know, they’re going forward, three big, beautiful plants. You’ll have to call him. I mean, maybe he won’t tell you what he tells me, but I believe he will do that. I really believe it.
But I said to Gary, I said, you know, Gary, you go to certain sections and you’re going to need people to work in these massive plants that we’re getting, that are moving in. Where do we have the people? You know where we have the people? In New York state that can’t get jobs, in many other places that can’t get jobs. And people are going to have to start moving. They’re going to move to Colorado and they’re going to move to Iowa and Wisconsin and places where – like if Foxconn goes to Wisconsin, which is one of the places they’re very strongly considering – but if Foxconn goes to Wisconsin and they have a very low rate and the governor’s done an excellent job, you’re going to have a situation where you got to get the people. But they’re going to start moving. And I’m going to start explaining to people when you have an area that just isn’t working – like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt – and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t – you can’t get people, I’m going to explain you can leave, it’s OK, don’t worry about your house.
You know, a lot of them don’t leave because of their house. Because they say, gee, my house, I thought it was worth 70,000 (dollars) and now it’s worth nothing. It’s OK. Go, cut your losses, right?
Such empathy…
You’ll notice that it’s the workers who are supposed to move rather than the industrialists deciding to locate their plant where all the unemployed labour is.
Pretty sure it’s a mountain in Alaska.
Aenima-cratic rule: Let’s just flood the whole thing… learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim.
I cannot imagine doing a job for 25 years and being told I need to retrain. It must be a daunting (if not terrifying) proposition.
Forrest Gump had it right. “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I work in a vertical with lots of gray-beard programmers who are kind of in the same boat. (My beard is getting more and more gray as well). They’ve spent their entire careers working in highly specialized platforms and languages and it’s not easy to just retrain and pivot into something new.
Despite the obvious logic that all programming languages are essentially the same, most employers don’t see it that way and if you’re past a certain birthday, age discrimination is a real and pernicious thing.
It’s not exactly the same as coal workers facing a dying industry but it’s not too far off. I can see the appeal to hunkering down and hoping for the best rather than face a scary and uncertain future.
We’d be wise to keep some sympathy for these folks because we may all find ourselves in similar shoes someday.
As a 48 year old auto worker in Detroit, I hear the same from my co workers who think its going to be boom times again for the industry. I tell my young co workers get a trade, get a degree or have a business. I started in 00 Ford had 120k production people. Now, we have 63k, making nearly the same amount of vehicles.
The sad thing is that his advice isn’t all that wrong, it’s just the fact that he and others excuse the constant churn of human beings from one job to another throughout their lives as acceptable or normal. When just two centuries ago people would live and die in the same place where they born. It’s not to say staying in one place is good or preferable, but that capitalism by design uproots and disconnects people from their communities. The fact people in Appalachia aren’t getting clued in that this is capitalism by design just proves to me people are so easily swayed by beautiful lies than ugly truths.
Indeed. I witnessed what happened with my uncle when he got laid off over the age of 50. I’ve been saving my pennies for the potential rainy decade down the line. Scares the hell out of me, being unemployable for some dumb reason like age.
It’s actually NOT their land.
I TRY to sympathize, really I do, but for some reason I can’t get my tears flowing for them: poor, poor fucking salt-of-the-earth coal miners!
“We’ve been digging this here land for a couple of generations after we stole it from the injuns, and nope, all we know is the diggins, and the diggins is all what we knows.”
Fuck THEM and their inability to adapt and change like ALL other fucking human beings on the planet.
Dude, it’s not their fault. Their world for the most part has been insulated from change for a very long time. Things like conservation, climate change, and sustainability are relatively new ideas in their industry. Ideas introduced by outsiders. Think about the fact that up until only recently has their world abruptly changed for the worst for reasons well outside of their control.
Yeah, it’s frustrating (infuriating) to see people refuse help but, try to think about why change is hard for them. They don’t have the opportunities that a software programmer or an electrical engineer have and they are constantly being lied to and manipulated by people who do not have their best interests in mind.
They are indeed the special little snowflakes of the countryside, quaint bumpkins of the Shire, who for so long have been shielded from the cynical forces of this bleak, modern world the rest of us inhabit with our colored people music, vast economies, and silly precious concerns about the environment (“environment” … liberals and their “fag talk”!)
Granted their Shire was obtained by bloody warfare against the original inhabitants (whose ancestors ought not to complain at all because they’ve got casinos, lazy bums!), but we can put all that aside because golly, these fearless miners live on the mountain tops and shady glens, spoon fed by the mists of magical mythical white man empowerment! Seize the day! Manifest destiny! Pull yourselves up by your own boot straps, don’t let that negro tell you what jobs you can and can’t work!
(edited)
Sorry, I re-read that and I’m on a very downward trajectory. But still… come on. These people oppose immigrants (while denying that they themselves are from immigrant families) without acknowledging that immigrants have far stronger resolve to adapt and seek out a better life in their pinkies than they have in their own selves.
(further editing)
And to be honest and fair, the simple things they are asking for – I just want to do this job which I take pride in, raise a family, and live in this beautiful part of the world (ignoring the environmental devastation which goes hand in hand with coal-mining), retire, live comfortably surrounded by my grandchildren – is what I want for EVERY single human being on earth, including myself and my kids. But voting for Trump and acting like histrionic, whiny little racists is certainly not the way we are to realize such a dream.
This is one I’m most flabbergasted about. How can they possibly hate immigrants? They come from someone just like the current batch of immigrants - someone who just wants to raise their family in peace and have a chance to build a life for them.
Oh wait - they’re 'Muricans now, and them new people is brown (or yellow, or black, or just somehow “Other”).
Is there any way to cure that particular ignorance?
That situation is deliberately manufactured by the capitalists.
