... one of Gessen’s characters says towards the end of the novel: “The trouble is that when you’re young you don’t know enough; you are constantly being lied to, in a hundred ways, so your ideas of what the world is like are jumbled; when you imagine the life you want for yourself, you imagine things that don’t exist. If I could have gone back and explained to my younger self what the real options were, what the real consequences for certain decisions were going to be, my younger self would have known what to choose. But at the time I didn’t know; and now, when I knew, my mind was too filled up with useless auxiliary information, and beholden to special interests, and I was confused.”
I was young once and knew then that I didn't know enough and I don't remember being lied to at all, let alone constantly, and of course if you're imagining your future you're imagining things that don't exist. Oh, and yes, hindsight is very sharp.
I was young once and knew then that I didn't know enough and I don't remember being lied to at all, let alone constantly, and of course if you're imagining your future you're imagining things that don't exist. Oh, and yes, hindsight is very sharp.
Though the point about being shovelled a vision of reality such as the consumerist one from birth, is that the entirety is a lie in philosophical truth terms, but because it is so all-encompassing, one has no idea it is a false version of reality. You're not meant to understand you're being lied to constantly.
ReplyDeleteA population gorging itself on American Idol & the like is most certainly being lied to about reality, & the same media's version of political social situations of a similar standard of inanity.
How'd you figure it all out?
ReplyDeleteBrave New World was written in 1932, Frank. How'd he figure it all out. Perhaps the use of intelligence. One's consciousness is something one has the capacity to experience for oneself, one doesn't need esoteric pathways to reach this citadel of truth, the kingdom of God is within and all that. Anyone who tastes experience in its simplicity sees the self-evident falseness of the brain-washing American Idol idiot culture for the degraded lies it all is. Though those who immerse themselves in the falseness naturally are so successfully dumbed down that they are happy in their servility.
ReplyDeleteWell, I've never see American Idol. In fact, I watch virtually nothing on television besides the occasional film or PBS drama. I don't feel imposed on by consumerism because I only get what I want or need. Now if other people enjoy watching American Idol and other TV shows, that's their business. You rant on about consumerism but what exactly are the specifics? In fact there are no specifics in anything you have said, just grand generalities about "consumerist from birth ... all-encompassing ... false version of reality." How does it follow that "a population gorging itself on American Idol ... is most certainly being lied to"? That's an assumption on your part because you feel contempt for those who watch American Idol (how often have you watched it?). Please re-read your second comment: It's all boilerplate. Who says experience is always simple. I've certainly had plenty that were complex. The point is, nobody is forcing anyone to watch American Idol or anything else. Your position is that people are being brainwashed because they insist on doing what they want to, which you happen to disapprove of.
ReplyDeleteBecause consumerism, like its supposed ideological adversity of communism, is simply applied materialism. A very reduced heaven on earth through the removal of higher truths from this domain. One is simply immersed in a material world of no intrinsic spiritual substance, and the attainment of products is one's highest goal. The very denigration of the human to 'the consumer' is a reflection of all this. Do I really have to spell out the whole point of things like Brave New World- the globalisation of mores of shallowness?
ReplyDeleteJesus said he that is not with him is against him. Do you really imagine the pathetic shallowness of a culture of idiocy- lets be adult enough not to have to debate the intellectual worth of a world that considers Friends to be some thing other than utter horseshite...& that apparently one of this culture's crowning glories...back up, this idiot culture is with Jesus, or is it perhaps an emanation of the defilement of the glory of existence. I grew up with rubbish like Knight Rider & the like. Was it anything but an imposed insult to my existence? Of course not, though as an innocent child, how is one to know different? One trusts the culture into which one is born. I'm afraid if this is not self-evident to you, then your standards of truth are shamefully low.
To look a little more deeply into it: The exclusive materialism of pure consumerism must inevitably lead to the leakage of all meaning from civilisation as materialism is an active philosophical corrosive; it is without any higher truths, and must deny and remove any such notions of being. Thus culture's self-evident descent into greater and greater inanity. To speak of people happily immersed in the inanity of Let them, it's their choice, is to imagine everyone is some kind of autinomius being capable of understanding their own essence and true nature, whereas naturally such philosophical insight is more than rare; thus the exaltatino of the Jesuses & Buddhas of this world. Instead we tend to accept the culture into which we are born, & if people are betrayed by being handed a table of values that are actually devoid of value, as is this consumerism, then it's only to be expected that most will mrely accept this at face value.
ReplyDeleteAnd, naturally, great art which tends to exalt life as intrinsically significant is wholly undesired. The game show & boy-band is much more satisfactory; products of the entertainment industry to be consumed by who else but the consumers.
autonomous not autinomuis.
ReplyDeleteJesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
Within Huxley's vision, naturally as said already, all higher truths are removed from existence; the ethos of this culture is without truth, naturally a vision of falseness, & as a corollary to the gospel quote, everyone immersed in this truth defiling 'culture' is a servant of that falseness. You can't be a servant of two masters, God & godlessness. And the state of Brave World as Huxley emphasised is most certainly godless.
You grew up watching TV shows I presume you wanted to watch and maybe even at the time enjoyed watching. I am also presuming, of course, that no one forced you to watch them. I once met a fellow who, when the junkie upstairs from him stole his stash, broke into the junkie's pad - this was before disposable needles - and dipped the junkie's needle in dog shit. After the junkie next shot up, he developed gangrene and lost his arm. There are far worse things to be encountered in life than shallow TV shows and Target stores.
ReplyDeleteAnd being angry about any of them leads nowhere. What natters is being good and kind, which is not always easy.
Frank, your answer is nothing less than intellectual abdication. If you have no interest in truth, as you apparently don't given your acceptance of a culture of essentially lies and idiocy, don't imagine it to be a virtue. You obviously disagree utterly with Jesus regarding the good shepherd leading his flock. Are people force fed a culture where someone like Paris Hilton is one of the most famous people on the planet, being lied to? Of course. Only within an infantile and insane culture could this occur. Or the vile tabloid culture of Britain. Are the people being lied to & fed a false version of reality? Of course. On the other hand you view humans so lowly that their consciousness and experience of life if defiled by vacuity is to be accepted.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not being angry about them. I'm merely treating them with the attitude they deserve. Huxley described Brave New World as the brain washing of people into enjoy their servitude. Jesus said:
“Enter through the narrow gate,” Jesus says at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. “For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”
You however have no problem with the broad path away from truth.
One might also recall the words of Adolf Hitler, "How good for the governments of the word that their people don't think."
ReplyDeleteOr "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
Or the Buddhist text,. the Dhammapada:
"O nobly born, let not your mind be distracted."
The mainstream west is contrarily dedicated specifically to inducing a constant state of distraction.
You know, Anonymous, if you would spend less time denouncing people - nor respect for truth, etc. - you might have time to examine your premises. You assert that people are force-fed lies and idiocy. That there are many things you disapprove of in the marketplace would seem to go without saying. That people's interest in these things is not the result of their own free choice has yet to be demonstrated by you. As I pointed out, the bother me a lot less than they do you because I don't pay anywhere near as much attention to them as you do - exercising my free choice. Paris Hilton is famous in large measure because she has worked very hard to become famous. It all seems to come down to this: You don't like the way most people spend their time. Well, too bad. They have the right to spend their time however they choose, even if it displeases you.
ReplyDeleteFrank, I'm not denouncing people, but an ethos. Though naturally this discussion is a waste of both our times, since I explained the essence of the current ethos to be applied materialism, which is intrinsically without any sense of value or truth, and hence the inevitable dumbing down of culture. There is no disputing this essence, and you have made no attempt to contradict it, it being clearly the essence of the philosophy of applied materialism and atheism.
ReplyDeleteHowever inferentially accepting this by your not even attempting to criticise such a view, you then stil somehow attempt to dispute the case, though without furnishing any actually criticism of the analysis of consumerism.
You are out of your depth philosophically, but rather than show the humility to perhaps accept the truth of what you have not even tried to contradict philosophically, you still disagree. Though since stupidity is its own self-defence, you labour under the delusion that it is I who am the enemy of truth...for the reason that I champion truth's very existence. You champion an ethos of truthlessness & consider it truth.
Notice, Anonymous, how much of your latest comment - to say nothing of the others - consists of ad hominem attacks. Where exactly has been your analysis of consumerism. You have made grand assertions about it. You have made grand assertions about the "truth," which apparently you are in more or less complete possession of. It's sort of like people who complain about capitalism. Once you get past barter, there are no societies that exist economically without something called capital. The late Soviet Union was not communist. Its system was one pf state-controlled capital. If I want to buy meat and veggies for dinner, I have to buy them, after which I will consume them. You say not denouncing people, just an ethos. Well, an ethos only exists because of how people act. You can denounce how people act without, by extension, denouncing the people who so act. Take a breather and read your posts. Maybe you can catch something of their tone of blustering rage. I haven't been defending American Idol or the like. What I have been defending is right of free individuals to make their own choices, whether or not you approve.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, Frank. Suppose lots of people decide to eat nothing but Cheetos and drink nothing but Kool Aid, year in and year out. And suppose there are advertisements for Cheetos and Kool Aid every block or so. How important is it that they are enjoying what they consume? They are still going to end up sick, with rotted teeth, and coated with an unnatural sort of orange dust.
ReplyDeleteThis is not good. Let me go to an extreme and say, even, that the situation is bad. Nor is it a matter of arrogance or elitism to say that, or to think that their "right" to make such "choices" is all but meaningless. They can keep on gobbling, for all I care. But it's a sickness all the same.
Besides, anybody who has lived through the past few years without realizing that people in authority are lying to him constantly (and barely even bothering to conceal that fact) would have to be in a coma.
Well, Scott, let's flip it. What do you do about those people eating the Cheetos? Or those people advertising them? Ban the ads? Ban the Cheetos? Eliminate all consumer goods except those that meet the approval of the bien-pensant class? The simple point I have been trying to make here is one that the comedian Fred Allen made many years ago when he was asked about his politics: "I think that everybody should leave everybody else the hell alone." So do I.
ReplyDelete