Nothing lasts forever. A reality that I'm not the most fond of. How nice it would be to buy a washing machine once and have it last at least the rest of your life or clean the house once and have it stay clean. My darn clothes always wear out and get holes too soon and then I can't even find the same things again because fashion has changed or they've changed the fit of my favourite jeans. Then the new clothes fall apart even quicker than the old ones, because they just don't make them like they used to. The impermanence of things is definitely a life lesson the universe seems determined I need to learn.
Image courtesy of @spiritabsolute
In all seriousness, though, change can be exhilarating or stressful, sometimes even both. It's a fact of life, but when it's stressful it's good to have some constants in life as a crutch to get you through. Sadly at some point those crutches inevitably get removed, so then how do you handle that?
For some people the lack of stability throughout their lives leads them to turning to smoking, alcohol or drugs as a crutch. Unfortunately this usually just perpetuates the cycle often passing it on to the next generation and leading to an early death. Others might have started with a stable life then had everything completely turned upside down; think economic collapse or war.
Change stands out all the more when you look into history, a topic I find fascinating. Yet the real irony is that the one constant that never seems to change is human nature. The things we complain about today were the very same things endured hundreds and even thousands of years ago, they have merely evolved with technology and way of life.
I love that things have survived through the years giving us a glimpse of those who created them so long ago. However, it always comes with a bit of sadness knowing that the people who created them or used them are long gone. Very little will have survived and much of what we know, or at least think we know, about people throughout history comes from written accounts found from those times. I think most historians will acknowledge that personal accounts will always come with a bias.
What we've pieced together of the collapse of the Roman empire was from historical reports from those who were literate enough to write accounts down. Yet more recently archeological finds tell a slightly different story in the lives of most people. From accounts, cities were abandoned and civilisation lost from them and while many did move out of them it seems those who stayed merely adjusted their way of life to the changing circumstances. What constitutes civilisation depends on the person. The ones who left went to rural communities and monastic communities taking their skills with them to be used there instead.
Perhaps the constant thread that goes through time unchanging is human nature, both the good, the bad and that range in between. It just adapts to the changing world repeating cycles of rising to complex heights and collapsing back to more simplistic strategies as cohesion breaks down on the larger scale.
I don't think this thought thread went where I was expecting or reached any real conclusion like I thought it would.
Hello, @minismallholding
First first of all, I want to apologize for not responding to your Discord request (I'm always absent and routine drags me down). I'm really sorry!
On the other hand, regarding your interesting post, I admit that I'm also a history lover. I often complain about the impermanence of things, no matter how high-quality they are. Wear and tear always end up damaging them, not just clothing. By the way, your arguments made me think of the paradox of Theseus's ship. But when I realize that the person I see in the mirror every day, beyond the wrinkles and gray hair, is no longer the same, they've been renewed to the core. Biology is amazing! But the essence of my being remains almost intact, except for the wisdom gained through experience (life's blows).
Yes, nothing lasts forever from a materialistic perspective. But... if we consider what you call "human nature," reiterated as you rightly say, it is the reflection of that immaterial (metaphysical) something that seems transcendent, as evidenced by the ancient stories handed down to us with bias. Then, change becomes the experiential process of being in the universe. Why and for what? I don't know. But here I am, and so are you, in an eternal moment if we view ourselves from an external observer's perspective.
Yes, nothing lasts forever. But we enjoy it while we can. And that's worth it.
About human nature? I recall the phrase by the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Africanus: "Nothing human is alien to me." So, it shouldn't surprise us that there is nothing new under the sun either.
Greetings. Wishing you a fantastic day.
This is my first time hearing of the Theseus ship paradox and now I've read up on it I'm reminded of this story of Trigger's broom from the comedy Only Fools and Horses. In short he's a street sweeper who's had the same broom for 20 years because he's looked after it well and maintained it. It's had 17 new heads and 14 new handles. 🤣
I was just talking with a friend today and on a similar thread we realised that the more you learn the more you also realise you don't know.
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It isn't just planned obsolescence anymore. There's a real pain to be had with the stuff that was built to last and just doesn't.
I take comfort in the fact that... it isn't very comforting to know that everything is just a bunch of atoms arranged in a certain way, for a certain period of time, and eventually, the forces of the universe will do whatever they please to the things we try to organise int order.
Manufacturing is just undoing the universe's work, I guess.
We're little biological factories of our own, working toward not lasting forever. The most we can do is have the moments count.
I am very much at the stage of my life where I want to buy things for the last time - I know this isn't always possible, But I'll wager that I won't need to replace my cast iron pan before I die.
I find a certain amount of peace in that too. It's how I continue to enjoy gardening with the amount of chaos going on. There isn't much you can control things only attempt to influence and contribute. Death is just part of the cycle that moves nutrients around. There is no waste in a natural environment and fauna and flora all feed each other, so nothing is lost it merely becomes something else.
Ah, yes! There's something to be said for simplistic, functional tools. Not much to go wrong with items like that. I dislike the stress of shopping, wondering whether you can afford to replace things and when it comes to electrical goods the fear that it stops working/doesn't work and you then have to find the time take it back again for repair or replacement sometimes not getting it back again for some time. This seems to happen far more often than it used to as well.
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That, and the constant increasing sense of "this is shit" everytime you buy something. eg, my car insurance renewal came in last night. At the max "sum insured", I can't buy a replacement to my current car, and they won't let me increase it beyond that max.
"New" stuff at the same price point, or second hand stuff in the price range - doesn't have the same feature set or creature comforts.
Entitlement, sure - but its so annoying. It walks right along the side of that beast called inflation, the deflation of the existing quality of things.
I hear that. We've been in Australia for 17 years and I'm only just having to throw out some of the clothes that came over from the UK with us. Nothing we've bought here has lasted much more than a couple of years, no matter how much we've spent on them or the brand they are. At one point I thought it was that Australia didn't demand the same level of quality, but worldwide brands should be the same no matter where you are, so I think it's more that the quality started dropping around the time we moved.
It's ironic that the more people try to avoid the throw away culture the more it seeps into everything you buy, even when you're trying to spend a bit more for higher quality. It's hard to find it anywhere any more. It could possibly be a sign of commercialism trying to stay afloat with both the cost of living and people's awareness of waste making them spend less.
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Owning Blockchain assets has made me contemptuous of physical stuff, which wears out and slows down (like my body). If you have a thing limited by existence and you want it to be over there, you need to pick it up and move it, like some kind of medieval peasant. Stuff that's everywhere is such an improvement.
My body has actually sped up, but everything hurts more. I'm probably just speeding up the wearing out part at this point. 🤪
Yeah the cops shot out the tyres a while ago; we've been driving on the rims, sparks all over the place, for a while now.
I am not a big fan of change in many regards yet end up embracing it one way or the other...usually among the last group of people to do so.
If I embraced certain things sooner I believe my life certainly would be more productive
Some changes don't stick, so maybe it's not such a bad thing to wait a little before embracing things to see if it's more than just a fad.
Nothing last forever very true tho sad, buh most things don't just leave us completely it only get modified, so, tho we miss the old version, the present version originate from the old ones which is most times better, but is still with us iñ a modified version 👍✨
So true! Life evolves, but human nature is remarkably consistent throughout history 🌱
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Change is constant in life. We must keep going through twist and turns of life.