Conversation

This grimdark future has more kinds of weather and lighting than I expected. I thought it would be gray overcast dusk and rainy with tire fires all the time. But there’s also bright blue skies and dawns and noons and cool breezes and stuff. Very disorienting.
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The average effect is lifeless, abandoned and junky, not foreboding with villainy looming over it. Forget Dark Lords, there aren’t even Bond villains or Mad Max grade local warlords.
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In hindsight, having interesting villains to fight makes for an optimistic class of apocalyptic futures. True darkness is when there aren’t even any villains.
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The word that really captures the 2021 global mood and energy is abandonment. Historically such periods had a focal point for the sense of abandonment as in “god has abandoned us” but since god died in 1882, modern apocalyptic periods lack a referent for the sense of abandonment.
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Our sense of the meaning of the present is always framed by a sense of the future. Moods like ‘premium mediocre’ allowed you to read the zeitgeist in a certain coherent future-framed way. Now the built environment is just a jumble of signifiers pointing in random directions.
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Abandonment in all 3 common senses of the word: - a child abandoned by parents - a house abandoned by inhabitants - a course of action abandoned by an agent
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Replying to
You should. I think all the lessons of Japan need translation for the rest of the world. There’s a reason I almost never use Indian examples for anything. What’s crystal clear in my head is entirely opaque to people not raised on Bollywood, cricket, and Hindu mythology.