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12-10-2019 Privyet Irina,Interesting article. My sister has a 4 year old boy and 2 year old girl and they are really cute, but they fight and sometimes the boy hits the girl. It enrages me. I stop it. Kids...no thanks  By the way, any comment on America's sociopath in Chief (Trump) and his trying to get the new President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden? |
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19-10-2019 Hi Irina. I wrote a message to you nearly a year ago. My name is Guilherme, I'm from Brazil. This nearly-a year-ago fact surfaced in my mind just now, so I came here. It's impossible for me to know whether or not you remember this, but I did write the message. That’s why I have the account. I mentioned not so between the lines in that message that I had the intention to put an end to my life, and you were as kind to me as uber-strangers can be, thank you. Still here, anyways, as you can see. “Now” I'd like to share a story with you and your readers, and ask a question. The story is: in April this year a woman was murdered near the place where I live. She was my age, I'm 29, she was 29. The murderer was her boyfriend. He stabbed her, and left the body in the apartment. People grew suspicious of him because he started to leave the place to fetch bags of ice (the genius!). This amazing plan failed eventually, because the smell became noticeable, as it had to. People, on their turn, had to leave the building, which was not that high, because of it. Now, can you imagine that? Her fate was this, to force people out of their apartments because of the stench coming from her decaying body.Back in 2005, there was here in Brazil a public consultation on gun use. There were two parties, so to speak, YES and NO. I remember watching the ads they ran and thinking, one day, that the NO party should use an ad like this: innocent man gets shot - innocent man falls to the ground - innocent man dies - cuts to: photo album with pictures of innocent man covering his whole life, each picture with a bullet hole in it. That idea stayed with me, and made me visualize more clearly the essence of empathy, which is, people are "a whole life". It's like there's this line of faces beside theirs, something similiar to that moment in the Bohemian Rhapsody clip, the faces flowing from Freddie Mercury's. I thought about this when I learned about the murder of that woman, and the fact that she was my age understandably touched me singularly, because then I could relate to her very clearly. I can speculate about what her thoughts must have been like in 2007, say, when she was 17, and so was I. Unaware of what was to be. And, life goes on. There's a song called "We're All Alone". The most famous version is the one by a singer by the name of Rita Coolidge, who didn't write it. The first line of the second verse is: "once a story is told, it can't help but grow old". This sounds like a law to me. You must have realized this by now. This subtle property of the linear flow of time. When something comes to an end, time marks the spot with a little flag, and says, pointing its finger to it: "this thing stays HERE". And every instant that follows this pronouncement can be seen as an addition to an oblivion that can't and won’t stop, and will keep getting wider and wider, even though the buried thing, the buried being, will have been forgotten intensely enough by a certain point. Which means time is a drunk sailor who won’t stop punching in the bar fight, even after he succeeds in transforming the face he’s punching into the biggest mess. "Lucimara" was her name, of the The Stench Lady, who's been illustrating this for half a year now, and counting. The question, quite simply: what do you think about this? There's a connection with what you said about children, I think, which made me write this. I'm too used already to this state of mind to be shocked or startled by reality. But still, I pity Lucimara. In fact, I'll never forget her, I'll oppose time until it defeats me, and do so by keeping her in mind. This quixotic thing brings me some relief. The Whole Life she was, not The Stench Lady, kicking people out of their apartments with fingers pressing their noses. I like this, saying this. Quixotic though it is. "The glass is half empty and half filled with a pig's vomit". If I had a coat of arms, the thing in Latin in it. But I don't want to kill myself anymore, just don't and won't. Bye Irina. |
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24-10-2019
Yep, I remember. Hi Guilherme. Well , another sad story, but the more you live and pay attention to those, the less they shock you. Sad, tragic, stinky - IS the norm of life. People in well-off countries being able to live comfortably well into their 80ies or 90ies and dying quietlely in their sleep - is the exclusion from the rule, and a luxury. Back in Ukraine, where I'm from, people have to deal with weakness, ill health, degrading and demeaning circumstances routinely. Just reading a couple of reports on how people are treated in public hospitals would give most people a chill. Stench of piss and shit is a part of it, moaning people 6 in a room is another. There's no care for the elderly, most elderly are broke and dependent on their children, government pension being a couple hundred bucks at best, enough to pay house bills and buy food. So when they get sick, demented, poop themselves and need daily care that's children's job to wash their old parents and change adult dipers, while the dementia makes them angry, spiteful and unable to recognize anyone. I am past being shocked by this. My way of coping with reality is just to accept it for what it is, and accept the fact that I'm never going to be OK with it, I'm never going to say 'it's all worth it' or 'it's not that bad', only the fact that it is terrible, but it's old news to me now, and there's nothing I can do about it. So I save my nerves and move on. |
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24-10-2019
Thanks. |
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24-10-2019 Irina,Have you heard of this book? It's the #1 self-help book in the United States as recommended by Doctors. It's based on "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" which is basically training oneself to have "realistic" thinking (not optimistic or pessimistic.) https://smile.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380731762/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=feeling+good&qid=1557361193&s=gateway&sr=8-3 I thought you may be interested in it  |
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25-11-2019 Ciao Irina,I'm trying to get vasectomy because I'm an antinatalist but apparently I need to pay around 1.000 euro for a 10 min. operation. Do you think, like me, that the government should take care of the expenses and recognise my right to become sterile? Thanks, Kevin |
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25-11-2019
Hey Kevin, Good on you for thinking of getting a vasectomy. My partner's got one, we're both happy not having to worry about using protection. Think about how much money this saves you compared to having to raise a kid!
Re governments, it's a tricky question. Antinatalists are a minority, and democracy is 'the dictatorship of the majority', so... Also, every goverenment pretty much wants more future taxpayers, so they're happy to sponsor people breeding, if anything. At least you're allowed to do it before having had any kids, I think in most countries women who never gave birth are denied sterilisation because everybody thinks they'll change their mind when it'll be too late. |
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18-12-2019 Hi Irina, the Brazilian William here. I don't agree with your answer to the comment I made above. You seem to think after all that a combination of State, good will and economics would do. The first x third world divide has to do with misery but feebly, only in the most superficial way, in fact. Go tell that first world thing to Omayra SГЎnchez. And if you still think that her (colombian) story is somehow connected to and explained by bad politics, then approach the Elephant Man, or those men of the USS Indianapolis, who were both too much the product of Stepmother Mother for this notion to stick even for a Second, so you can remember how bad, essentialy bad, this world is. Or else go tell that to Giacomo Leopardi, who experienced himself the darwinian hell first hand, with no cuts, and nothing to cling to. They will tell you public services can't change the Really Real Problem. But still, of course, people will just go Pilate, and say what you said, and move on, but I can't. And why? Out of severe pity? No. These people are like accusing Uncle Sams, the Elephant Man above all, since he shows how illusory "romantic love" is, that there's no room whatsoever for the sober "Dover Beach" take on it, let alone the drunk "Romeo and Juliet" one. That, for instance, is why. They fuck up the remaining illusions, the God = Love & Justice being one that comes before and fucks up itself. Romantic love is actually cold-hearted and rotten to the core, in that it is given people because of looks they didn't earn, but just "got", and denied others who are not to blame for being disfigured or ugly. So on and so forth. And I guess well-treated patients leave good hospitals merrily many times to return to their "significant other", who's anyone but Joseph Merrick. So I don't agree with you Irina, and don't really understand your pessimism. You actually played the Pilate card real quick (which is what you do, according to your answer) and paid Uncle Sam no attention. I wonder why. And again, this has nothing to do with mourning others and willingly being miserable in their name, which Life put in the gutter. I'm not for this Simone Weil shitshow. I'm talking about finding yourself deprived, through them, of even the remaining consolations, because they turn out to be illusions themselves. This is no "Dover Beach" world that we live in, not even that. I believe in friendship alone. In allegiance to people who refuse to be foolish. A secular "narrow way", you might say. That movie "Midnight Cowboy", I believe in it. I don't believe in love songs and people who want to grow old together, because Lizzie VelГЎsquez is not going to be one of them, regardless of State action, and what should that show you about yourself? |
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17-03-2020 Irina,How about the coronavirus pandemic? Will you make a post on that?  Be well! |
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28-02-2022 Irina,I have not written in your board for some years. I only wish you are allright given the situation your country is going throug now. Please stay safe. Greetings from Paraguay. Raúl |
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