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For my part, I've replaced optimism and believing the best of people by default with a grin and the absolute 100% certainty that if they cannot find a pig to fuck, they will buy some bacon and play oinking noises on YouTube.

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Hope

Started by Luna, September 14, 2011, 10:08:50 PM

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Adios

Quote from: Jenkem and SPACE/TIME on September 15, 2011, 12:42:08 AM
Quote from: Hawk on September 15, 2011, 12:31:31 AM
Quote from: Jenkem and SPACE/TIME on September 15, 2011, 12:29:46 AM
Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 11:19:07 PM
But still, fuck hope.

:kingmeh:

Preach that shit Freeky. As long as there is life there is hope. It may not come with a pretty pink ribbon around it, but in most cases life goes on. it is up to each of us to get from it what we may.

I may have to start a new thread for this idea, to keep from jacking Luna's thread (which the OP is stellar, btw), but even while we preach there really is no hope in The Church Of Tucson, we still have it.  False hope, maybe, but on the days when the God-City ignores us, it doesn't seem so false, and in hope we find the strength to take another step, and another, and another, and soon enough there is momentum, which raises the bar of hope just a little more, and then our backs straighten a little more, and our steps are lighter, and our spirits lift more, and eventually we're driving down Oracle road at 70 MPH, Fire Down Below blaring out the speakers or in our heads and hearts, and shrieks of delight pierce the hot, blinding rain, while up on the roofrackf its the other guy's turn at sunroofing.  

Eventually, that hope will be shattered.  That is the God-City's will.  But we never, ever, EVER say "fuck hope."*


*Unless it's the same circumstances as other people moaning "Never again..." on a Sunday morning.  And what invariably happens to that "Never again"? :lulz:

I think I love you.

Luna

There's more than one flavor of hope, Freeky.  (And you're not jacking, is cool.  Some of the coolest conversations and ideas I've seen online have been the result of thread drift.)  The one out of that box is the nasty one, the one that leaves you standing with a fistful of ain't gonna happen, clinging to it while other, better stuff passes you by.
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"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Quote from: The Payne on November 16, 2011, 07:08:55 PM
If Luna was a furry, she'd sex humans and scream "BEASTIALITY!" at the top of her lungs at inopportune times.

Quote from: Nigel on March 24, 2011, 01:54:48 AM
I like the Luna one. She is a good one.

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"Stop talking to yourself.  You don't like you any better than anyone else who knows you."

deadfong

Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 10:24:10 PM
Luna, you'll be pleased to know that there was no "Hope" in Pandora's Box. The word "hope" did not exist in the Ancient Greek vocabulary, and it's but there in modern translations to give the story some sort of moral.

The moral is that there is none. The Greeks were merely telling us that we're fucked forever, but the romantic Victorians wanted nothing to do with it. I'm pretty sure the words that did fly out last were, in fact, "You are fucked forever." in Greek. Or something like that.

If I recall correctly, they didn't say "how are you?" in ancient Greece; what they said translates into English as something like "what are you suffering today?"  I always thought that gives you all the insight into the Greeks that you'll ever need.

Lovely OP, by the way.  Horrible, but lovely.

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I like. Good work, Luna.
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Quote from: deadfong on September 15, 2011, 04:11:14 AM
Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 10:24:10 PM
Luna, you'll be pleased to know that there was no "Hope" in Pandora's Box. The word "hope" did not exist in the Ancient Greek vocabulary, and it's but there in modern translations to give the story some sort of moral.

The moral is that there is none. The Greeks were merely telling us that we're fucked forever, but the romantic Victorians wanted nothing to do with it. I'm pretty sure the words that did fly out last were, in fact, "You are fucked forever." in Greek. Or something like that.

If I recall correctly, they didn't say "how are you?" in ancient Greece; what they said translates into English as something like "what are you suffering today?"  I always thought that gives you all the insight into the Greeks that you'll ever need.

Lovely OP, by the way.  Horrible, but lovely.

I need to learn more about ancient Greece, STAT.  :lulz:

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Jenkem and SPACE/TIME on September 15, 2011, 05:24:14 AM
Quote from: deadfong on September 15, 2011, 04:11:14 AM
Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 10:24:10 PM
Luna, you'll be pleased to know that there was no "Hope" in Pandora's Box. The word "hope" did not exist in the Ancient Greek vocabulary, and it's but there in modern translations to give the story some sort of moral.

The moral is that there is none. The Greeks were merely telling us that we're fucked forever, but the romantic Victorians wanted nothing to do with it. I'm pretty sure the words that did fly out last were, in fact, "You are fucked forever." in Greek. Or something like that.

If I recall correctly, they didn't say "how are you?" in ancient Greece; what they said translates into English as something like "what are you suffering today?"  I always thought that gives you all the insight into the Greeks that you'll ever need.

Lovely OP, by the way.  Horrible, but lovely.

I need to learn more about ancient Greece, STAT.  :lulz:

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Cain

Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 10:24:10 PM
Luna, you'll be pleased to know that there was no "Hope" in Pandora's Box. The word "hope" did not exist in the Ancient Greek vocabulary, and it's but there in modern translations to give the story some sort of moral.

The moral is that there is none. The Greeks were merely telling us that we're fucked forever, but the romantic Victorians wanted nothing to do with it. I'm pretty sure the words that did fly out last were, in fact, "You are fucked forever." in Greek. Or something like that.

I like to think it was a story about how you cannot turn the clock back, that some things, once they are unleashed, take on a life of their own and escape your control.

I cannot say 100% for sure that was the point Hesiod etc were making, but it doesn't strike me as entirely implausible.

And of course, it has the added benefit of being true.  I used to, for a while, put down the "reset" mentality to playing too many computer games, but of course it has always existed historically: the idea that you can turn back time and undo past mistakes by working from a clean slate.

I don't know about you, but I've never even seen a clean slate.  When I was at school, we used blackboards, which are a kind of slate.  But when you rubbed out the chalk, it didn't actually remove the chalk entirely, it just smudged it, making it very hard to read.  It's still there.

A lot of life is like that.  My mind tends to focus more on the big issues, so I'm going to use one of those as an example, even though you can scale this right down to the individual person.  So, in the Afghan War, the commanders there realized their strategy was not doing what it was supposed to, and that actually a lot of people whose support they'd like were quite angry with them. 

So they went back to the drawing board ("clean slate") to come up with a new strategy.  They then modelled how, based on their understanding about insurgencies, how they should've started from the moment the occupation began, and changed their strategies accordingly.

Problem: this didn't undo all of their past actions, which had led people to believe they were foreign crusaders, thugs and sadists.  They saw it, rightly, as a cynical ploy designed to buy their support.  The new policies, while much better, couldn't blot out the previous seven years of neglect and brutality, and so the slate wasn't wiped clean, the past wasn't overturned and the policies didn't work.

Nuclear weapons are another example.  The Manhatten Project was hard work.  Seriously hard work.  But once they correctly figured out how to create a nuke...well, it opened the floodgates.  Now, in the opinion of nuclear experts, a bomb equal to the one that levelled Hiroshima could be made by as few as 20 qualified people, with $6 million dollars to hand.  And while one nuke is terrifying enough, imagine the nuclear war to follow....

Another way of looking at it I suppose is this: "prevention is better than cure".  It was easier to never open the box in the first place, because now they're out, you can only treat the symptoms of the ills unleashed on the world, never defeat the root issues. It is better, therefore, from the outset to attempt to prevent the entry of evil into the world than to try and fight the obvious evils that plague us, in the long view.

But of course, Greek tragedy is all about how only the gods really can have that long perspective.

Placid Dingo

Quote from: Doktor Phox on September 14, 2011, 10:28:43 PM
Quote from: Suu on September 14, 2011, 10:24:10 PM
Luna, you'll be pleased to know that there was no "Hope" in Pandora's Box. The word "hope" did not exist in the Ancient Greek vocabulary, and it's but there in modern translations to give the story some sort of moral.

The moral is that there is none. The Greeks were merely telling us that we're fucked forever, but the romantic Victorians wanted nothing to do with it. I'm pretty sure the words that did fly out last were, in fact, "You are fucked forever." in Greek. Or something like that.

If I remember correctly, there is a Roman version in which "hope" is there.

But yeah, no hope in the Greek version.

I actually remember hearing a version consistent with Lunas interpretation. Not as poetic.
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Quote from: Luna on September 14, 2011, 10:55:36 PM
There are a lot of versions of the story.

This one is mine.

I fucking love this version.

Luna

Quote from: Donald Coyote on September 19, 2011, 12:10:59 AM
Quote from: Luna on September 14, 2011, 10:55:36 PM
There are a lot of versions of the story.

This one is mine.

I fucking love this version.

Thanks, I'm really happy with how it came out.
Death-dealing hormone freak of deliciousness
Pagan-Stomping Valkyrie of the Interbutts™
Rampaging Slayer of Shit-Fountain Habitues

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Quote from: The Payne on November 16, 2011, 07:08:55 PM
If Luna was a furry, she'd sex humans and scream "BEASTIALITY!" at the top of her lungs at inopportune times.

Quote from: Nigel on March 24, 2011, 01:54:48 AM
I like the Luna one. She is a good one.

Quote
"Stop talking to yourself.  You don't like you any better than anyone else who knows you."

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

This is beautiful, Luna.

Hope kills; despair is only tiresome.
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