Richie Havens “Here Comes the Sun”
An Aging Luddite
I work online, and I think online writing classes work at least as well as face to face teaching. I love technology and gadgets too, even though they are too often tainted by consumerism. I am not certain of the source, but someone left this Douglas Adams quote as a comment on my site recently:
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
I went on short trip last weekend to Meramec Caverns— my GPS is the greatest thing since sliced bread on these trips–and I was struck, once again, by the image of people waving their cell phones around in the air, trying to get what we euphemistically call “service.”
I understand the impulse. The motel and the campground that surrounds the caverns is old-fashioned and doesn’t have internet connection. (Many modern campsites do.) I don’t use my cellphone much, and as long as there’s television of some sort, I’m fine. I felt that little twinge of anxiety, though, knowing that I couldn’t call anyone if I got lonely.
What’s making me feel more and more like a Luddite, though, is the sheer ubiquity of people– almost all of them under 40, and most under 30, who seem so helpless addicted to nothing. I enjoy Facebook, to cite this year’s model as an example, but there’s no there there; you look at a picture or two, or maybe follow a link someone shared, laugh at a video, and then you are done.
Why is the brochure is so compelling that it requires almost constant attention, almost as if it were a pet or a child? I don’t believe that this is generational. When I was young, say, a teenager, I loved rock and roll music, but I was also aware that some people went too far with it and became fanatics. It was embarrassing at best, at worst dysfunctional. This fanaticism about the latest trend has become the norm.
Stupidity as Public Policy
I knew the deficit debate was coming, but the sheer brutal stupidity of it is shocking. Still, if you do a search on “the deficit isn’t really a problem” you get thousands of hits on arguments that do make sense; here, here, and here . So there’s no shortage of people saying that the emperor has no clothes. What perpetuates stupidity? Or, rather, who has a vested interest in perpetuating stupidity?
One explanation is that the Republican Party, along with some very powerful and rich right-wing ideologues, are so well attuned to the media’s 24 hour hype-for-profit desperation that they can create a rhetorical mountain out of any molehill they might choose. The mainstream Democrats seem paralyzed by either political cowardice or a misguided pragmatism. Stupidity is the real third rail of U.S. politics.
Too much of it is too transparently intentional to be simple ignorance. Some people, apparently, really do believe that up is down, and that the moon is made of green cheese. At least part of the nonsense sector is simply cynical or cowardly, of course, but I think much of it is simple stupidity. This current wave of anti-intellectualism has lasted more than a generation. We’ve been dumbed down.
Stupidity reproduces itself wherever creationism is equated with evolutionary theory, or climate change reduced to an opinion, or Christians, contend that gay marriage will destroy marriage. We all make stupid decisions;the stupid sector, though, contends that knowledge and self-reflection, those processes that can counter stupidity, are either unnecessary or dangerous. Stupid is as stupid does.
Carlton Reese Unity Choir “By and By”