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Amusing ourselves to death

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Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#81

Post by elohesra »

lmm wrote: post #71
clienthunter wrote: post #34

I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing. I have problems with this. In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good. Where doe…

How's this? There's a difference between what we want and what we enjoy. You see this most clearly in drug addicts - no, in compulsive gamblers: they desperately want their fix, but aren't any happier when they're doing it. But the same effect is in play for all of us, in more subtle form. You can find it in people who are trying to write: they enjoy writing, but they don't want to do it, have to force themselves to…

> A paternalistic intervention [...] might well result in people living lives they were happier with than the lives they would have chosen for themselves

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the pater making the decisions is wiser and more able to make correct decisions for others than others themselves. In a utopia, the decision maker might be the smartest, wisest person alive, with a nigh god-like ability to discern what's best for everyone. In reality, the decision maker is just a regular Joe. Worse, in democracies like the US and UK -- where potential leaders seem to primarily be chosen solely on the basis of social class (when did you last see a genuinely lower class politico?) -- there is absolutely no reason to believe that the leader has cognitive abilities that are above those of the population.

In a utopia, a paternalist system would work because the decisions made by the pater would be better than those made by the populace. In reality, it results in USSR supermarkets stuffed with canned tomatoes because the ever-wise pater wasn't even able to predict people's most basic wants.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#82

Post by trendoid »

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #50

I find that every generation thinks this of the next. For example here's what the early 1800's thought of students using paper: http://i.imgur.com/Od2BB51.jpg These kinds of declaration have been going on for centuries. There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce. You can't produce, even low brow media, without some active members of the population who have to first create it ;)

Its not just about creating, its also what these people are creating and whats the incentive to create? Do these creators ever think about the repercussions of their creations on the society? If your creation is not motivating people to create themselves or even making them learn something interesting, I am not sure if its the ideal creation.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#83

Post by Chestofdraw »

pjc50 wrote: post #26
_bfhp wrote: post #10

I never finished 1984 but both seem to ignore the ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism. In 1984, or at least this comic, power and violence seems to happen for their own sake, "power corrupting power", and similarly for Huxley's hedonism. The comic claims "Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to pas…

Orwell's book was entirely about state power; it was a parody of Stalinism. He was in the awkward position of being a socialist who'd been shot at by hardline communists during the Spanish civil war, and wanted to warn the left that Stalinism was really dangerous and should not be associated with.

Orwell was fighting for the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) not against them, this faction had the support of Stalin. He was shot by members of Francos army, they were a Fascist / Nationalist party that had the support of the NAZIs and Fascist Italy.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#84

Post by sliverstorm »

clienthunter wrote: post #34

I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing. I have problems with this. In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good. Where doe…

... has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing.

Is that really what you take away from this discussion? To my eyes, the notion is that we have become passive and in the process abdicated control over our own lives. You can make an argument that that is a good thing, but that is a very different argument from yours.

Were you frustrated by the lack of public outcry at the NSA's secret activities? The idea here is that people brushed off the NSA's actions because they turned back to Candy Crush et al, which was oh-so-ready to distract them, and it is this that the original author is talking about- not moral criticism of shallow hedonism.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#85

Post by bananacurve »

elohesra wrote: post #81
lmm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's this? There's a difference between what we want and what we enjoy. You see this most clearly in drug addicts - no, in compulsive gamblers: they desperately want their fix, but aren't any happier when they're doing it. But the same effect is in play for all of us, in more subtle form. You can find it in people who are trying to write: they enjoy writing, but they don't want to do it, have to force themselves to…

> A paternalistic intervention [...] might well result in people living lives they were happier with than the lives they would have chosen for themselves The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the pater making the decisions is wiser and more able to make correct decisions for others than others themselves. In a utopia, the decision maker might be the smartest, wisest person alive, with a nigh god-like…

>in democracies like the US and UK -- where potential leaders seem to primarily be chosen solely on the basis of social class

Maybe that is true in the UK, but that is clearly not the case in the US, unless you are going to try to argue that Obama is a WASP.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#86

Post by normloman »

kristofferR wrote: post #31
sidcool wrote: post #28

What is the solution of this quandary?

And what's the problem with it? I surely think a lot of popular culture is stupid/a waste of time, but as long as I (and others) have the freedom to freely chose more "fruitful" things to do with our time - then what's the big deal?

You have less freedom than you think. Timesinks are addictive. We've all clicked on a link-bait headline, even though we knew it would waste our time, because the text was so enticing. And most can remember playing a boring video game longer than they wanted because they were distracted by some manipulative aspect of the game (need another level / badge / chicken on my farm). It's gotten so bad, people regularly refer to MMORPGS as "skinner-boxes."

With effort, and focus, we all can give up today's addictive timesinks. But when we're assaulted by the timesinks on an hourly basis, it's not as easy as you think.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#87

Post by lmm »

bananacurve wrote: post #85
elohesra wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A paternalistic intervention [...] might well result in people living lives they were happier with than the lives they would have chosen for themselves The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the pater making the decisions is wiser and more able to make correct decisions for others than others themselves. In a utopia, the decision maker might be the smartest, wisest person alive, with a nigh god-like…

>in democracies like the US and UK -- where potential leaders seem to primarily be chosen solely on the basis of social class Maybe that is true in the UK, but that is clearly not the case in the US, unless you are going to try to argue that Obama is a WASP.

"WASP" is not a social class. Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#88

Post by bananacurve »

lmm wrote: post #87
bananacurve wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in democracies like the US and UK -- where potential leaders seem to primarily be chosen solely on the basis of social class Maybe that is true in the UK, but that is clearly not the case in the US, unless you are going to try to argue that Obama is a WASP.

"WASP" is not a social class. Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer.

Obama's father went to Harvard but his grandfather was a cook. Hardly a pedigree.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#89

Post by malka »

StavrosK wrote: post #56

I never understood why Brave New World is a dystopia. To me, it always seemed to be saying "yes, everyone's happy all the time, but our current values are marginalized!", which is just the appeal to tradition fallacy. Can someone please explain to me what's bad about everyone being happy all the time? "They aren't happy in ways that currently make us happy!" isn't a strong argument...

they are chemically happy yes, iirc, most (all ?) citizen use a drug named 'Soma'. I presume it would act like a benzodiazepine.

Re: Amusing ourselves to death

#90

Post by k0n2ad »

clienthunter wrote: post #34

I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers. This is universally construed as a bad thing. I have problems with this. In order to decide that something is bad, we need to have an idea of what is good. Where doe…

Although it isn't exactly off-base to say that this (article/comic?) is an attack on the current state of society, it IS off-base to equate the attack to the "oft-repeated wail that capitalism ... thrill seekers."

I would just like to remind everyone that BNW (the examples you chose seem to be parallels to BNW rather than 1984) doesn't have much to say about "capitalism." There seems to be a conflation here of capitalism with "consumerism" - consumerism being one of the pillars of the dystopia that the novel imagines, capitalism notwithstanding. You have to be careful where you draw the parallels. For example, the hedonistic thrill seekers in Brave New World were quite literally engineered to be that way - they were born in test-tubes and raised in a finely tuned environment. If anything, BNW is an argument against a utopia, not against a free market and the opportunities it provides. Actually, "opportunity" is unnecessary in BNW, because everyone is already mired in consumption and ecstasy. Nobody wants or needs it.

Whether capitalism is leading to that type of dystopia is another argument entirely, and one not addressed by the book... or even the article/comic.

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