The malaise ! Can anyone relate ?

**Ernie Nemeth** · 17th August 2018 22:12

Dougie, it certainly isn't just you - as these posts attest to.

Sometimes nostalgia overwhelms me, but as I consider selling out after sixty years in the trenches, the nostalgia is wearing off. Now I think of why did I go in late twice last week and miss a day because of heat stroke. Now my paycheck will be short. And not six months ago I was living off less than what my check today is short. Go figure. I watched all my friends sell out and most of my generation, but I stubbornly held out, resisted.

At sixty years of age I unfortunately have to think of my retirement which will not be all that comfortable. But I don't mind, I sleep with a clear conscience.

**racheldubois** · 24th August 2018 08:15

I grew up in the Midwest and then snobbish Connecticut before falling in love with my now husband on a trip to Scotland. So I now live in rural Scotland as an ex-pat and I can say that no, the whole world isn't zombified. In our towns and villages, people do indeed talk to each other and I regularly chat to folks on the bus. Young people aren't always on their phones and do have things to say. And mercifully, no bearded tattoo dudes and yoga pant women

That said, there's a different kind of sleepwalking here to some extent, more like how I imagine the 50s and early 60s to be, with folks (who are mostly white, mostly middle class) being concerned with their day to day lives, as opposed to looking for a deeper significance or purpose to their lives. And I find that stifling at times, which I why I come to this forum -- because I'm certainly not going to be discussing how media controls the populace through fear down at the local butchers!

There's also a very clear line for me between being anti-sleepwalking and groupthink and being anti-PC. Too often I see someone complaining about being PC as a nostalgia for the days when people like them had the power and people not like them "knew their place". And that's not okay with me. I have no nostalgia for my childhood in the 80s -- it was all TV and shopping malls, so I much prefer today with the Internet allowing me to interact with lovely people like you.