Ridiculous reality

[TheDustyZebra]

And whether one is speaking of food or water, the point is that it isn't easily transferable. You can't just use less water so that someone in a third world country can have some. You can't just eat less or stop feeding your pets so that someone elsewhere can have food. The transportation is extremely expensive if not impossible. And you can't just allocate the money to feeding or watering people in a foreign land, because corruption will take all that money away before it reaches the intended recipients.

 

[Cathbad]

And you can't just allocate the money to feeding or watering people in a foreign land, because corruption will take all that money away before it reaches the intended recipients.

How sadly true this is! Several years ago, I watched in disbelief as a news article (I think on CNN) showed military leaders order subordinates to take food away from people that a prominent agency had delivered to ease the people's suffering. These weren't insurgents, but government troops!

 

[Montero]

While we are busy de-railing on the subject of the feeding of the planet - I'd like to highlight Population Matters – for a Sustainable Future. The planet is over-populated and I am concerned about the planet as a whole.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

~checks my calendar~

oops lol OK it's not too sad yet.

 

[Biskit]

The other day I was wondering why there are starving people in the world and yet millions of pet owners have enough money to feed meat to their animals. Somehow humanity can't spread it's wealth to the poorest people in the world.

In a moment of sad pedantry, it occurred to me that this is not what I would call ridiculous reality, not something that would require serious suspension of disbelief or high tolerance to cheesyness. It's an easily-recognised, unpleasant bit of reality that I wouldn't have any doubts about putting into a story. Sad, deplorable, horrible - insert adjective of choice - and very much a part of the behaviour of people in bulk.

A few months back we watched an excellent six-part documentary, The Brain with David Eagleman, where one episode included research on why we can behave so badly in large groups.

 

[Cory Swanson]

In essence, though, isn't this all why we write. In a world that feels truly out of control and bizarre, we create stories so that we might feel in control of something world for a while. Also, we have to process all the crazy somehow.

 

[Cathbad]

Also, we have to process all the crazy somehow.

I am NOT crazy... despite those doctors' opinions...

 

[Ed Ryder]

The whole of World War 2 is pretty contrived to be honest.

 

[Toby Frost]

In essence, though, isn't this all why we write. In a world that feels truly out of control and bizarre, we create stories so that we might feel in control of something world for a while. Also, we have to process all the crazy somehow.

It's only in recent months that I've come to realise how true this is. So much of what I'm writing at the moment seems to be characters saying "The world has gone berserk - how do we stop this?"

 

[Montero]

Have you read any Sheri Tepper?
Her take on planetary ecology and how we are trashing it and ways to fix it, has really been saying the human race has gone beserk for a lot of years now - if you haven't read her, you might be interested.

 

[Piper]

In terms of ridiculous things- I've often thought about how I could explain to aliens (or people from the future) why we felt it necessary/ reasonable...etc to poison our water supply (water necessary to live) so that our lawns wouldn't have weeds.

 

[TitaniumTi]

There are so many things I don't understand about the way the world works. Wilful poisoning of our land, our homes and ourselves is just the start of it. Then there's the exorbitant prices for designer clothes made in sweat-shops with near slave-labour. And then... it's all so depressing.

On to smaller scale unbelievable stories:

I stumbled across the story of Kopperl's "devil's wind" recently. There's a story or two in that.
The Kopperl Heat Burst : The Alabama Weather Blog

I also have a story from my own experience. I had just gone to sleep in our rural home, on a hot night with just a touch of rain in the air - the sort of rain that's barely a step up from light mist. My daughter woke me, saying there was an orange light out her window. Sure enough, there was an orange light to the south, with lines of fire falling from it - almost like an exploding plane, except that it looked to be stationary. I was terrified and confused. Then I moved, and tree branches on the skyline brought it into perspective. It was something much smaller, much closer. It turned out that moisture on an electricity pole had conducted electricity over the dry dusty surface of the poles, igniting the dust and then the timber. That was the first of several electricity pole fires over the next few weeks.

 

[MWagner]

Whenever I feel the world today is awful, I just pick a history book off a shelf to put it all into context. In short order, I reaffirm my belief that there's no time I would rather be alive as an average person than today. The very fact we can worry about the things cited in this thread is because we aren't consumed with fears of plagues, famines, having our homes burned down by merciless marauders, getting crushed in a coal mine, getting parasites in the rice fields, being drafted into armies, or dying in childbirth at 31.

And not only in the developed world. The material security, access to food and clean water, etc. in the developing world is better today than it has ever been. If you were to poll everyone in China, India, and Nigeria today, precious few would want to go back and live as their grandparents did, doing back-breaking work in unrelenting dread of famine, banditry, and pestilence.

 

[Biskit]

The very fact we can worry about the things cited in this thread is because we aren't consumed with fears of plagues, famines, having our homes burned down by merciless marauders, getting crushed in a coal mine, getting parasites in the rice fields, being drafted into armies, or dying in childbirth at 31.

But try telling children that today and they won't believe you.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

How sadly true this is! Several years ago, I watched in disbelief as a news article (I think on CNN) showed military leaders order subordinates to take food away from people that a prominent agency had delivered to ease the people's suffering. These weren't insurgents, but government troops!

Yes, this is the reason why people starve—greed and corruption—not any scarcity of food that causes us to choose whether to feed our pets or feed the starving populations in other countries.

Though it is hard to imagine how people can be so cruel, we know that it is true, and in fact tend to find it easier to believe in acts of inhumanity when we come across them in fiction than in acts of kindness and sacrifice which equally reflect the real world.

 

[tinkerdan]

When I was young...one of my favorite books was Frank Edwards' Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. And I've always thought about that when watching the news. When I wrote my first book and I'd stop to do a reality check on something I'd just concocted I'd set back and watch the news and realize that it really wasn't that far out after all.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I was reading Fortean Times on the train and I came across something that would fit this thread completely:

It was in an article on 'Strange Statesmen' a series that looks at the seriously weird politicians of the world. This week it was Francisco Macias Nguema, one-time president of Equatorial Guinea...

"On Christmas Eve 1975, he ordered his soldiers to dress as Santa Claus and then festively execute 150 of his opponents in the middle of a football stadium whilst Mary Hopkins's charming ballad 'Those Were the Days' was relayed on a continuous loop through loudspeakers to enhance the mood."

The list of the other atrocities and things that happened are similarly OTT and not pleasant reading.