[lit-ideas] Re: J.S. Bach and Unchained Memories
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:30:26 -0700 (PDT)
I couldn't agree more. The culture is downright lobotomized. If there is gold
among the dross, one finds it and keeps quiet about it. People are stunningly,
amazingly ignorant, and I'm talking about educated and professional people. In
the movie Motorcycle Diaries the two guys quote Lorca and Neruda; they
recognize bad versus good writing. When I was in college we did much the same
thing. Today college students are much more likely to be vocation based, which
is to say, usually finance vocation based. Professionals I know read only best
sellers like Steven King. They never heard of, literally never heard the name,
Kurt Vonnegut. They think D-Day was in Vietnam (Susan Jacoby). Libraries are
even phasing out classics for lack of interest. The ignorance of people is
stunning.
It's so bad that I'm not above thinking, and I say this only partly in jest,
that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep the masses fat and happy, the
bread and circuses, while the 1% of the population shares the wealth. There is
today a virtually seamless merger of corporate and public interests (so called
public, once known as Congress) to where corporations give us not only our
daily bread but our 'facts' and our belief system as well. We know what they
want us to know. For example Lawrence's contention that the rich are going to
pay taxes under Obama as if that's ever going to happen no matter who's
president. It's a statement of complete ignorance, music to the ears of the
70% of CEO's who support McCain. Without going off on politics, but everything
is politics, the NYT seems to be constantly scrutinzing Obama with never a word
on McCain except to show a picture of him wounded that just pulls the old heart
strings. This is what's
being fed to the masses. Why?
Truly, people are manipulated like puppets. Maybe a conspiracy theory is a
bit much, but the constellation of events has so come together that it's
downright eerie how utterly ignorant people are of everything, whether it be
literature or music or science or history. The spread of technology doesn't
explain it. Books are a technology after all. As Eric says, shock has
replaced culture but why? It's like our food (courtesy of huge corporate
interests) and our physical condition are a metaphor for our brain power, lots
and lots of junk from every quarter until people sit there fat and immobilized
with glazed looks on their faces worshiping money like glistening meth in the
sunlight, to quote Mark Momford. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but rant or
no rant, it's what's out there.
--- On Sun, 6/22/08, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: J.S. Bach and Unchained Memories
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, June 22, 2008, 9:37 AM
Carol: I sympathize strongly with Eric's 'culture is becoming
stupider'
attitude and struggle against it. What do list members say to the
opinion that popular culture 'en masse' was no more intelligent in the
days in which the 'long-hair' Bugs cartoons were made than it is today,
and that there is (now as then) gold to be found among the dross?
Statistics about the so-called "Generation Next," aka "Busters
and
Mosaics," can be unsettling. What can you do with a max attention-span
of thirteen minutes? Isn't it time for a commercial?
I read an essay from a researcher at Brookings who stated that while
this demographic is exposed to vastly more media than its predecessor in
more media forms (no surprise there), they also express growing cynicism
about all media PLUS a growing lack of awareness about how media shapes
opinion and values. Sort of a hip disdain for media combined with
increasing gullibility about its influence.
Curly with an iPod, stumbling into texting Moe, who hits Larry as he
plays Grand Theft Auto. Emoticons for cream pies.
Plus it's not the same culture. Western Culture has been replaced by
McCulture, the soma of global capitalism. It's not Ed Sullivan putting
Jascha Heifetz and Elvis together; it's the focus-grouped, multi-ethnic
face of the Burger King rapping about beef in Hindi on millions of
screens where adrenaline shock has displaced culture shock.
The fie is calling,
Eric
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
