i've just been watching the pbs documentary on the american musical group THE CARPENTERS for about the 4th time (it's on during pledge drives every year). i love documentaries, and thanks especially to this documentary, the carpenter's music. karen carpenter had such a lovely melodic voice, and their hit songs imo are pretty uniformly terrific...
after they became hugely successful in the early 70s, karen developed some awful eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia. she was one of those young women who for whatever reason become obsessed with their weight and dieting and in extreme cases continue to insist that they feel ugly and fat even when they've become skin and bones. this is what happened to her and it eventually killed her when she was in her early 30s.
i'm very curious: why does someone like karen carpenter, who was young, reasonably attractive and had achieved immense success and fame thanks to talent and good fortune, have such severe psychological problems? i think she must have been tremendously unhappy and sad, unfulfilled.there's another strange self destructive behavior that like eating disorders, affects primarily young women: they cut themselves. even though i've read a good deal on these strange crazy maladaptations to the stresses of dystopian life. i still don't fundamentally understand thembecause of my curiosity about the details of karen carpenter's sad tragic short life, i read the one biography of her that came to my attention, a book titled LITTLE GIRL BLUE. it was alright, perhaps about the best bio that could be written about her, but it left my desire to understand better what drove her to such extremes mostly unsatisfied. she had family issues, primarily with her mother. i think being typical religious 'conservatives' they were quite repressed, including emotionally. of course, i think sexual repression plays a huge role in many neurosies. i find it strange beyond words the way society and culture stigmatize and repress our sexuality, and how virtually no one seems very troubled by it, or recognizes it as a serious problem. it's been a serious problem for me throughout my life. i woke up to this fact, this awareness, way too late, around the age of 30. being awake to it, i still haven't figured out how to deal with it, or even know if their is an effective way for me.now i have great empathy for the downtrodden and unfortunate. i relate to karen because while i haven't starved myself to death (self esteem must be rock bottom to do such a thing... perhaps mine has never been that low) or anything like that, i feel my whole life has been out of my hands. i didn't choose to be born into this world and many times i've wondered if this life that's been thrust upon me has been worth the grief, the pain and torment. as i've aged and perhaps grown wiser, i think i've become more aware of the horror of it, not just for me...book i'm currently reading is another nonfiction account of a horrific legal case involving 4 young black men (one was only 16) falsely accused of raping a 17 year old white woman. lynchings and an evil corrupt sheriff who was a brutal murderous racist, well known as such, and still elected to (7) 4 year terms as his county's leading law enforcement officer. and lynch mobs.then there's these horrible common sheeple like this 17 year old 'girl' who for a variety of reasons was persuaded to cooperate fully in framing 4 innocent men, which she did with no apparent public remorse or subsequent apology, even decades later... my point is, i'm horrified by america and americans. all one need do is look beneath the surface to see it's and their ugliness, stupidity, callous, bigoted cruelty and oppression. smh!in dystopia, dystopia goes unnoticed for the most part by the vast majority who don't look beneath the veneer, who more or less embrace the propaganda that's taught in schools and corporate media, who think america's just great the way it is or has been in the past (trump's MAGA lunatics especially!). this is a great part of what makes dystopia so dystopian to me. as i've wrote b4, it makes me feel sort of like the protagonist in a twilight zone episode. while other progressives share some of this perspective, no one i know comes close to sharing all the knowledge and views i've acquired leading to this blog. being unique in any way is a recipe for loneliness. being uniquely cognizant of dystopia and looming doom... is a fate i didn't choose, nor am happy about.about 30 years ago i was seeing a therapist and posited that i just might be a loser. i liked and still like his response, which was to the effect that if someone fails consistently to succeed at whatever, at achieving to some degree one's goals and thus happiness, then yes indeed, one might be considered a loser. by that definition, i think i am a loser. but i surreally don't know why. adverse circumstances and genes i suppose. i certainly didn't choose it, am not happy with it. i don't know how to change it, change my life, get it out of it's comfortable but deadly rut. so in a way i'm like karen. i identify with 'losers', or victims. i see myself as a victim, a helpless victim, just like sheeple who starve or cut themselves.as a lifelong loser i feel cursed, but having learned so much about the sometimes much greater misfortunes of others, and especially thanks to having learned scientific facts and projections which make the future of our world and species look horribly bleak with doom relatively imminent, i now think we're all cursed, all losers, all victims.here's a good video of the late great karen carpenter, singing one of the carpenter's memorable songs, whose lyrics are appropriate to this doomer post:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFoQxjgbrs
