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"In an age where there's no canon, where there are so many other forms of information, and where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television," he said, "I think that's pretty impressive, quite frankly." Mr. Starr continued: "We should be alarmed, I suppose, but the horse has long since run out of the barn. There are two distinct cultures that have evolved, and by far the smaller is the one that's tied up with book and high culture. You can get through American life and be very successful without anybody ever asking you whether Shylock is an anti-Semitic character or whether `Death in Venice' is better than `The Magic Mountain.' "
-- Bruce Weber for The NY Times
This is an excerpt from another article highlighting the decline of American culture. This one is based on a new authoritative survey called "Reading at Risk." Mr. Starr is the optimistic one in the article. It is noted that this falling off of reading holds across the culture. Weber quotes Mr. Dana Gioia:
"It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group," he said, calling the survey results "deeply alarming."
The article closes on an especially depressing note:
"The one category of book to rise markedly was that of religious texts, with total sales of $337.9 million, 36.8 percent over the previous year."
Medieval indeed...
.
"In an age where there's no canon, where there are so many other forms of information, and where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television," he said, "I think that's pretty impressive, quite frankly." Mr. Starr continued: "We should be alarmed, I suppose, but the horse has long since run out of the barn. There are two distinct cultures that have evolved, and by far the smaller is the one that's tied up with book and high culture. You can get through American life and be very successful without anybody ever asking you whether Shylock is an anti-Semitic character or whether `Death in Venice' is better than `The Magic Mountain.' "
-- Bruce Weber for The NY Times
This is an excerpt from another article highlighting the decline of American culture. This one is based on a new authoritative survey called "Reading at Risk." Mr. Starr is the optimistic one in the article. It is noted that this falling off of reading holds across the culture. Weber quotes Mr. Dana Gioia:
"It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group," he said, calling the survey results "deeply alarming."
The article closes on an especially depressing note:
"The one category of book to rise markedly was that of religious texts, with total sales of $337.9 million, 36.8 percent over the previous year."
Medieval indeed...
.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 05:14 pm (UTC)From:And it was my friend Matt who said that there are growing legions of people who barely seem self-aware.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 06:28 pm (UTC)From:Crazy world...
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 06:42 pm (UTC)From:People have gotten to a point where mass consumption is an end in itself, and anything that would distract them from it... say, intellectualism, or even dissent... is seen as undesirable, boring, or somehow vaguely discomfiting. (Though consevatives may tow this line more obviously, having convinced millions of people that bona fide intellectuals are somehow rabid and misguided liberal firecrackers).
Besides politicians, the biggest ally in this is the mass media, including every single news network.
The whole effect is compounded by a distinct pattern in education to avoid a broad and disscussive-based education, and focus more on localizing children's learning so entirely as to make it less likely that they'll enter the world armed with ideas (or even the idea of HAVING ideas) that might keep them from blindly consuming. It's like Newspeak without the actual speak: if you limit the ways in which people can think, you can manipulate it to the point that dissent is no longer possible.
It's not necessarily a conscious act by any particular group: it's the way that unchecked capitalism has grown into a beast with its own dynamic and own will to survive.
This is why hundreds of Winnipeggers line up on a Sunday night to drink beer and watch souped-up cars drag-race down Portage Ave. and applaud like brainless lobotomy rejects.
Not that these are new ideas at all.. the Romans were fantastic at the bread and circuses effect too.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 06:58 pm (UTC)From:http://www.theepidemic.com/
It's reasons like that that actually make me have less hope for the future, because I see it every day, and I am assured by people who have memories long enough to know that things have been changing in how children are growing up.
My point is that as our society has grown to directly market to children, the market now exerts greater power over them than anything else, including parents. Youth narcissism is through the roof, and essentially the generations about my age and younger are coming up so thoroughly programmed to react instantaneously to consumer shifts that the possibility of them as a whole to even desire a greater cultural experience is completely negated. They are only interested in seeking out the lowest common denominator.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 08:14 pm (UTC)From:As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper
prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breath of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in
Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would
cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had
plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards
withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not God that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man- There are only
four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 08:21 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:00 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:06 pm (UTC)From:My above comment was the part where I agree wholeheartedly with Nader and others that there is no substansial difference between the Democrats and the Republicans: much as I have a crush on Edwards, I'm certainly aware that he and Kerry will do nothing to bring about reversal of cultural decline or a decrease in the value of automaton-like consumerist thinking: even my beloved Clinton is just another facet of that systematic problem.
So in that way, I do recognize that the so-called differences between left and right in America are negligible at best: they're both too firmly grounded in the capitalist and consumerist society which has spawned them.
In the end, I take the tack that at this point, there is no real way to reverse that decline, at least not in the foreseeable future, and likely not in my lifetime.
So, I think that the only way to deal with it is to try and minimize the concrete, easily evaluable damages which the right can wreak on the world, while recognizing that both sides are both equally grounded in the more intangible systematic problem.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:23 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 08:07 pm (UTC)From:But to refuse to admit defeat seems somehow too elitist to me... I mean, I'd love to sit around and feel great and perfect in my ideology, and be damned if it is practical... but realistically, I am defeated by what is going on.
I'd rather fight to save what can be saved with the hope that future generations can save a little more rather than have the whole thing backslide and have injustice etc. grow exponentially, because I can't recognize what is beyond the ability of this society and this system to accomplish.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 12:30 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:05 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 07:05 am (UTC)From:I'm not opposed at all to using the system to create changes or fight reactionary change. However, one must be very careful. Because if you continue to speak the language of the beast, if you become immersed in its workings, then ultimately you will lose sight of whatever real change you hoped to accomplish in the first place, and in the end at best you'll be back-sliding and struggling feebly against a system that is fundamentally opposed to even the most modest reforms. Witness the pseudo-death of keynesian economics and the welfare state, for example.
As for admitting defeat, perhaps you can admit defeat if you want revolution in a year. won't happen, buddy. But to admit defeat in the long-run is indeed self-defeating, and what's more it makes no sense. But even if it were true, I think I'd still keep flopping around like a fish out of water, maybe splashing some people, pissing others off, but accomplishing nothing more than that. If I didn't stand up for what I think is right and good, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
Anyway I'm at a distinct disadvantage here, as I keep heading out the door to one place or another. LJ is a third-rate debating forum in a lot of ways, I find.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:10 am (UTC)From:Perhaps, but I don't see it that way. I think that every person who's thought about it at length knows what they believe to be right and wrong, and will throughout their lifetime.
But to admit defeat in the long-run is indeed self-defeating, and what's more it makes no sense
Why? There's nothing nonsensical in saying that the world will never be a wholly just place, and that all we can do as a generation is try and move it a little further along on that path.
If I didn't stand up for what I think is right and good, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
Who's to say that you can't do that while admitting that impactful solutions can only be found in compromise?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 11:11 am (UTC)From:Yeah, but it's first-rate for carrying on flame wars!
(Sorry to break into this scholarly colloquy, but I couldn't resist making my contribution.)
;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:55 pm (UTC)From:Though, I hope some Winnepeggers know how to wile away the time even better...
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 09:01 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:30 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 07:59 pm (UTC)From:As far as I'm concerned, the only way to HOPE for a shift in the ideas that are being heard is to first push the status quo to a point where those ideas are palatable.
For instance, I would suspect that many ideas are more easily accepted in Canada because we have, say, public health care... which is to say, because we're at a point where the minimal examples of progressive thought and policy are acknowledged and implemented by our government, that makes it so that other ideas can take root. Because we are comfortable with a minimal variety of left thought, we can be comfortable with things slightly beyond that zone.
I suppose the best simile is the way that a pair of mountaineers navigate during a storm, when there is no visibility.
They start at camp together. The first man (or woman, I suppose) walks out, looking backwards, until he is exactly at the last step he can take before he cannot see the first man anymore, and puts down a stake. Then the first man walks to the other man, and walks past him, and the process is repeated. Eventually, they get to where they are going, even though they couldn't see it whatsoever when they began.
I believe the same process is at work. If you can get the slightest bit of headway, or damage-minimizing policies, and give them time to set in and become part of accepted social consciousness, then you can begin to accept others.
In more practical terms, it's like suggesting that legalized gay marriage could have even been possible a hundred years ago. It is possible only because we have managed in spite of other declines to take enough steps forward that we can see it: and it's possible also because left-wing elements of our governments and societies moved to include that discrimination on basis of sexual orientation was wrong.
If there could even be a stable centrist "left" in America, it wouldn't threaten whatsoever the status quo of the capitalist system. But it would make it so that even the tiniest framework of those ideas was palatable and generally accepted in a way that it currently is not, and from there, there is at least a chance that it will grow.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 12:40 am (UTC)From:I think you have the idea that I think there should be some kind of revolution next week, or something. Of course I don't think that, because it's ridiculous. Maybe when I'm an old man, but that would depend on a lot of things.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:15 am (UTC)From:Grassroots movements are good because in some ways they can generate ideas that eventually trickle upwards to the mainstream. But in the end, and I've said this before, the system isn't even remotely afraid of them or their ideas. What we need can't come from the grassroots fringe, we need a paradigm shift that can only come when a government makes small enough steps forward that people begin thinking more progressively.
I never said you think there should be a revolution next week. I'm just sick and tired of being looked down upon by the radical left (and I'm not necessarily saying you) because I'm not ashamed or embarassed to take the hand of the proverbial beast. There are reasons I think the way I do.
Boo-cerrr-rackka!
Date: 2004-07-11 03:07 pm (UTC)From:Re: Boo-cerrr-rackka!
Date: 2004-07-11 04:09 pm (UTC)From: