The Coming Lovecraft Generation

[old book]

I just had this thought: if the world economic crisis ever takes off as it's supposed to, there will be a generation or two of people expecting something like a contemporary middle class lifestyle which won't be there for them. Lovecraft went through the same kind of disenfranchisement when his grandfather Whipple went bankrupt the final time. Does that mean we are slipping into a world inhabited by a disappointed and brooding Lovecraft Generation? Will any of them be literate enuf to right NEthing wurth reading, or R they just born2fail???

[Bob Lovecraft]

Born to fail. Totally born to fail.

Bob

[old book]

Good old Bob, I can always count on you for a reply to any random yet sincere claptrap I come up with. In a way, though, isn't the idea of a fall from a high estate and regaining one's rightful place in the cosmic vastnesses really at the heart of the various incarnations of the television show Wipeout? I think I could pass the Love Handles and the Bopper and even the Wall of Sucker Punch, but that congeries of squamous red balls would certainly tax me.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Well, since I have no idea what is so squamous about red balls, I will only reply as follows: "The Great Gatsby" was the seminal work describing a previous lot generation. And you know, I think we are heading straight for another one, one characterized my the stupification of America and a generation of L33t Speak idiots. I suspect one day, I will be a bitter, pissed-off old man who just pines for my lost youth and the return of better days. Bummer for old Bob Lovecraft.

Bob

[PresidentManningsPeriwig]

I think the conception of the youngest generation as illiterate, stupid vaccuums of meaningless pop culture has a ring of truth to it, but is grossly overestimated. I think the proliferation of social media allows us all to easily see and access the ugly, naked ignorance of the average person, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is a new phenomenon unique to a generation.

[Bob Lovecraft]

I think the conception of the youngest generation as illiterate, stupid vaccuums of meaningless pop culture has a ring of truth to it, but is grossly overestimated. I think the proliferation of social media allows us all to easily see and access the ugly, naked ignorance of the average person, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is a new phenomenon unique to a generation.

I agree that it is not unique to the current generation, as I agree with your idea of the media age simply exposing the ignorant underbelly of the majority of the population, but that same social media that exposes it also proliferates it. And if kids are anything, it is impressionable. Hell I remember being a kid and the influences around me, and I have to say that I was influenced more by my peers and television shows/movies (I still want to be a Jedi) then by my parents and authority figures. That is why I am so glum about the prospects of the media generation.

Bob

[old book]

I think the conception of the youngest generation as illiterate, stupid vaccuums of meaningless pop culture has a ring of truth to it, but is grossly overestimated. I think the proliferation of social media allows us all to easily see and access the ugly, naked ignorance of the average person, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is a new phenomenon unique to a generation.

You spelled vacua wrong

I wasn't really thinking about Wipeout, red balls or the Media Generation, but maybe media becomes the consolation for the disenfranchised, 15 minutes replacing the gifts of the Cargo gods. I love Big Brother. <3

[Bob Lovecraft]

I have a big brother, and yo know what? He was a totalitarian government all on his own when we were kids. So my reaction to 1984 was petty negative. But that is beside the point, I guess. I still have a sense of doom and dread about the future of american culture in the coming decades, so yeah, perhaps we are all feeling a bit of what Lovecraft felt in his day. And that, borhers and sisters, is a disturbing thought.

Bob (getting closer to HPL with every L33t-speak reference he sees)

[Genus Unknown]

Every generation since the trees has believed that it was living in an age of decline. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. I have no idea whether we're currently witnessing an actual decline or not; I suffer from crippling depression anyway, so all prospects seem equally bleak, whether they're true or not. It makes it hard to tell.  

"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching."

[Eric Lofgren]

Every generation since the trees has believed that it was living in an age of decline.

Perhaps it's caused by social guilt? It does amaze me at how the arguments for the lack of prospects for mankind far overshadows the opposing opinion, when I have no doubt that the future of our species is likely going to succeed quite well. We just need to get rid of the greed that exists in the world first.   

"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching."

All that's missing in there is, "Dogs and cats living together."

[Bob Lovecraft]

Get rid of the greed in the world? I'm sorry but that Golden Child was killed long, LONG ago.

Bob

[Eric Lofgren]

I totally get what you're saying Bob, but at this stage in my life I refuse to stay negative and try to only see the positive.  I'm a big believer in the pay it forward theory. It's an uphill struggle, but worth it. This theory of course doesn't preclude pole shifting, freak planetary alignments, alien invasions, or all of the above if you follow dubious proponents of Mayan prophecy, affecting the course of our future .   

[Genus Unknown]

All that's missing in there is, "Dogs and cats living together."

My favorite part has to be "every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching."

Makes you wonder what our anonymous Assyrian would have thought of Twitter.

[Eric Lofgren]

In the era of the Twitterverse, you have to wonder if our Assyrian scribe is actually onto something

[old book]

A long-dead friend of mine used to say most people have no book in them, some people have one, and a very few have multiple books inside crying to be set down on paper. I don't think he was being elitist or snobby as our Assyrian scribe friend was, obviously trying to protect the scribal guild from encroachments by the rabble. The ONLY thing I've found twitter remotely useful for is to catch up on the latest antics of Anonymous via those weird truncated redirecting URLs. Last night I heard Iran went off-line, self-imposed internet exile to keep the satan out, but presstv.ir came in loud and clear, and one of their top stories was Anonymous took down CIA.GOV. Sure enough, they did. It wouldn't load, it did some funny redirect, and isup.me said it was dead and buried. R.I.P. CIA <3

I remember Tim Leary used to talk about being a "positive paranoiac." Or maybe it was Robert Anton Wilson. Probably both of them, coming to the idea independently. The idea being that a paranoid schizophrenic comes up with elaborate schemes detailing how the universe is plotting against him or her, while the positive paranoiac hallucinates or finds reasons to justify the idea that the universe is plotting for him or her, for his or her benefit, that everything in the world is working to make this the Best Possible World of All Worlds, and Just For Me. (TM) Leary and RAW died anyway, as Jesus the realist would point out.

Terrence McKenna, also dead, had sort of the same idea, that there are temporal cycles leading up to a singularity of levity due to hit... in December this year. Sort of a coincidence I guess. He wasn't working off the Mayan calendar as far as I know. Bubbling chaos laughing at the center of the cosmoses. Cosmai. Whatever.

You might have also noticed the "herald" of the Coming Lovecraft Race/Generation in the heavens: paranormal radio is alight with the snooze that people are hearing weird angelic aethyric Enochian buzzes, hums, hisses and trumpets all over the globe. I listened in for a while and found it was very similar to some stuff I posted over in the Entertainment/Music category/thread, namely,:--

white  noise stasis - cthulhu wakes (r'lyeh rising)
not breathing - bowels of cthulhu
aleister crowley the great beast 666 - sigil of the master therion

That Space Command. HAARP or the aliens are playing this sort of stuff using the atmosphere as a woofer does not bother me. I am quite pleased they didn't play Tiffany or Britney. That would've scared me.