Friday, 18 July 2008
Somnambulance
Somnambulance: a vehicle for transporting people to a slow, soporific death. Otherwise known as mainstream culture. Some say the somnambulance floats atop the main stream, while others claim the somnambulance is the stream itself. Some claim the somnambulance is consciously driven by human agents, while others that it is self-propelled, merely unconsciously obeying the laws of its own being.
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If one is in a state of boredom, taking up a hobby can be helpful. Stamp collecting is good. Start with a theme like "cats of the world" or "famous airplanes" and branch out from there.
Cats of the world sounds good.
Come on, it's not all that bad. If it weren't for mainstream culture, what the fuck would all us poor, stupid people do with our time. Read? Go to the theatre? Debate the great social, political and cultural issues of the day around the fireside? Who knows, we might even start poking our noses into politics and other important spheres.
Now that simply wouldn't do, would it?
"Man is a communal animal. Therefore, man is a political animal." - Aristotle. Perhaps we should update it by replacing "man is" with "humans are". Chatting around a fireside? Doesn't seem good for global warming. All procreative creative activity should be banned. It likely produces too much carbon dioxide and methane. The friction alone produces too much heat. This has to be bad for the earth as well. Collecting "cats of the world" stamps is carbon neutral. Planting a garden is better. Green plants soak up carbon dioxide. This is probably a better hobby than stamp collecting.
Though I don't mean mainstream culture is by definition awful, Neil. It's the horrible, soulless mass 'culture' emanating particularly from our English speaking colleagues either side of the Atlantic that is so contemptibly false. By contrast, Cork against Galway in the hurling on Saturday...Things like the GAA are part of an immune system against infection by these polluted, hijacked cultures.
I wish I could say that people in the rest of the world are not attracted to our, undeniably, "horrible, soulless mass 'culture'"..but alas they are. In Kuwait anyway.
The problem is, in the west at least, not so much I think that people are lazy but that they often think that it is 'stiff', and 'square' and 'pompous' and 'pretentious' and 'la-de-la' to discuss the human experience with nuance, accurancy and subtlety in the way High culture expects.
Why is this?
Jonathan: As they say, water seeks its own level. A lot of people would rather watch American Idol or Desperate Housewives than think about anything deep. I don't know that this is particularly bad. We get enough superficial do-gooders wasting tax-payer's money on dopey ideas that will never work. We have them on City Councils and County Boards all across the US. They have a tendency to end up in state and federal government. Better we would all be if they watched TV instead.
'A lot of people would rather watch American Idol or Desperate Housewives than think about anything deep. I don't know that this is particularly bad.'
Yes, I agree. Intellectual and cultural snobbery, if anything will just strengthen the forces of barbarism in reaction.
Beyond that we should remember that the human is not only intellect. he is body and feelings too..and if one is metaphysically inclined, as I am, soul and spirit too.
The sources of nourishment for these apspects need not only come from intellectual, high brow realms.
And to look at it differently, yes, many of those with pretensions to intellectual usefulness, would do the world a favour if they piped down, a lot of the time.
But the point isn't whether people enjoy shite or not, so much as the underlying ethos behind the entire culture, which inevitably produces the ensuing shite. It's applied materialism devoid of all truth.
This isn't about cultural elitism.
There's a line from the Dhammapada, "O nobly born, let not your mind be distracted."
The ethos of the west is "O ignobly born, let your mind constantly be distracted."
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