Orwell is right. Humans can learn to "survive" in a free information age, but can't live freely in a observed environment.
Amusing ourselves to death
91–100 of 126 posts
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#92Earlier 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 (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.
The upper classes generally seem to have a lower time preference than "average joe", which is an encouraging factor for this kind of politician. (If anything I worry that the rise of a populist politics where lower-class leaders are electable will lower the stability of the country - to my mind the last genuinely lower class prime minister was a certain greengrocer's daughter)
> 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.
Sure, no-one would advocate a centrally planned economy. But I think there's a case for soft incentives - central government funding for museums, art galleries, and universities; taxation of drugs and perhaps of sports or similar popular entertainments. These things have a long history but are being undermined by a postmodern view that says that all art is equally valuable, that popular music is just as worthy of funding as experimental music, popular authors just as worthy as literary authors.
In recent years I've seen what feels like a dumbing down of e.g. the Proms - indeed, of the whole BBC - justified on the grounds that it should give the people what they want. And while that's an important consideration - there's no point in a public service channel that no one watches - it shouldn't be the only one. Even as imperfect humans, we should try and help people better themselves, rather than just leave them to what they want.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#93Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Which only demonstrates that occasionally someone manages to move between social classes, and has no bearing on the argument made above.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#95Something I found surprisingly infuriating lately is that on the YouTube app for iOS, you can be watching a video full-screen and, before the video is even finished , a thing slides up from the bottom about what it wants you to watch next. Fuck off! I'm still trying to watch the one video I elected to see and it's already trying to herd me down the attention deficit rathole.
YouTube app... for iOS... there's your problem right there.
Thanks for posting!
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#96I 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…
You're putting far too much thought into it. Put it this way, I don't know anybody who actually goes home and just drills into the topics they are profoundly interested in.
99% of people go home, watch some news, and then watch reality tv.
A very small amount of people read or dedicate their lives to living a life of virtue not complacent pleasure.
That's sad. We rather be on Facebook and Instragram and Snapchat 24/7 than disconnect ourselves and feed our brains.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're doing a disservice to the 'bottom 55%' of society. Ignoring perhaps the bottom and top 5% of the curve, the spectrum of intellectual difference isn't that big. Most people can read a book. Most people can visit a museum. Hell, most could write a book. Most people can understand and enjoy intellectual pursuits. The reason why the bottom 55%'s chief pleasures are "TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect s…
So there is a conspiracy by the "elites" to make the masses love the Kardashians? This level of absurdity is not apparent to you? Being intelligent is not a perfect defense to confusion.
There doesn't need to be a conspiracy to make the masses love the Kardashians. All that is necessary is for the elites to follow their own drives to meet the demands of their social class and accumulate wealth to retain their position (and there's nothing sinister with wanting this; we all have strong drives to keep or improve our relative positions). The rest follows pretty much by itself:
It is easier to create wealth by feeding the immediate drives of the consumers than by trying to make them genuinely happy and fulfilled in ways that require their potential customers to put in effort and make sacrifices in the short term.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice stance! But isn't this apologetic thinking a pattern applicable on pretty much any order of things? "It can be worse" and "don't ask too much from your high-horse" are not the principles I choose to follow nor recommend to others. I agree that the world (at least in the most part) changed for the better from "back in the day" but I believe that it was thanks to that kind of people that use to sit on high horses…
Thanks! I have answered your question in my own mind many times. I want to live in a world where there is true freedom. I want a purer form of capitalism with heavy reductions in current government control that inhibits the ability of us all to do things today. I want them to live in a world where the very concept that one person or group of people enforces control over others is both alien and absurd, and certainly…
How will you have "true freedom" in a world where your access to resources is restricted by government enforcement of private property?
What you describe as a whole is tautological. A world where "one person or group of people enforces control over others is both alien and absurd" is pretty much by definition not capitalist in any shape or form. Not only that, but most people who want such a "capitalism" and then invoke reductions in government control tend to want to remove lots of the regulation that reigns in capitalism somewhat to protect the freedoms of the rest of society.
"Purer" capitalism has been rejected time and time again because of what it implies.
Numerous lives were lost of the many decades US unions fought to get recognition of the 8 hour working day, for example (and May 1st is still celebrated as the international day for workers demonstration partly in recognition of the AFL-CIO's restart of the battle for the 8 hour day after the Haymarket Massacre), because of how uneven the power is and was between employer and employee in most fields: You may have any number of de jure freedoms, but they are irrelevant to someone who will starve to death if they exercise them.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#99What 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?
The problem is that it reduces the capability of the population as a whole to make informed political decisions. The more distracted we are by superficial things, the less outrage we might express over abuses of power.
In other words, if more than half of our country buys into pure hedonism over critical thought, then there's ample room for democracy to fail.
Re: Amusing ourselves to death
#100I 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 p…
"has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers."
This has been a problem since the Roman times if not earlier- people focused on the games raher than the politics. Humans have been hedonistic thrill seekers pretty much since always, as far as I can tell.