Michael Anderson2 said:I have to weigh in here again. To be honest, I’ve noticed that same superficiality in myself, and certainly in my kids. We are being absolutely flooded by a constant stream of information and content; there just isn't any breathing room to actually engage with anything deeply. There is too much noise, and before you can even process one thing, the next thing has already hit you. You lose interest because you simply don't have the time. We aren't really living in the present anymore—we're just bouncing between past data and future plans.
My kids finish one video game and immediately jump to the next, then onto music, Skype, soccer, music videos, skateboarding, social media... they flip through a hundred channels on the TV, grab a quick pizza, and barely even take the time to eat properly.🙄
The other day, I was listening to Bach—specifically his work with organs. I accidentally put the wrong CD in, but once it started playing, I figured I might as well give it a listen. As the piece progressed, I got this sense of playfulness, almost as if Bach himself were playing with the organ pipes—up, down, shifting tones, acting almost like a child at play. It’s as if he’s playing with church organs.
It’s the behavior of a child whose father was an organist. After losing his parent at ten years old, he moved in with his older brother, Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721), who was also an organist. Of course he’s going to play with organs—what else was there to do in a 17th-century church? He didn't have many options. And given his natural talent, it's no surprise he mastered those instruments completely.
The point of this story is: what are our children going to become? They will become whatever they spend their time playing with. In our case, it's everything and anything, done quickly and shallowly. They have no time. Are we raising a generation of superficial shells? I’d be curious to hear about the experiences in the United States, which is certainly ahead of us in these matters.
Edit:
Toccata and Fugue in D minor! 😬
It took Bach a lifetime to master those organs, but in doing so, he expressed his free will. The systems used for composition back then—polyphony, harmony, progressions, all that—they seemed to align perfectly with his own internal informational entropy as a human being. Even now, when we listen to Bach, it feels like he "pulls" us into his world. We can't always see the foundation upon which he built the music, because it contains more information than we are capable of processing through just a few octaves of a single organ.
Kids on the internet and their phones, downloading games and scrolling endlessly through Facebook... they are in the same position we are in when we listen to Bach. They are pulled into the "game" as passive players by a system whose informational entropy is far greater than their own. The difference, though, is that the information filling them up via the internet isn't the stuff Bach or Mozart would provide; it's mostly, well, junk. Pornography, lies, nonsense... that sort of thing. Here, entropy isn't achieved through quality or organized thought, but through sheer quantity of low-quality noise. But it's still enough to drown an ordinary human mind, to strip away its "free will" and sink it into the Matrix. Apparently, in the US, they try to teach kids in school how to pick out quality content—the top 10%—and distinguish it from the 90% of garbage online, but in my opinion, that's not something you can really teach. Simply put, this bombardment of information leads to a "Brave New World"—a society split into alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons; managers, programmers, admins, consumers, and the laborers who just surf porn sites and work as cashiers at a local grocery store. 😬
Quincy:
Have you ever actually tried getting involved in politics at any level? I suppose I have, and I can tell you that people holding positions at any stage... well, they can be anything, really, but I wouldn't call them incompetent. In fact, if I’m being honest, you might even say they are exceptionally talented at the specific traits that democracy seems to favor most: sycophancy, pushing agendas, manipulation, scheming, planting seeds, misrepresentation, bribery, forming alliances with similar types only to betray them later, sucking up to power, and so on... I won't even list them all. I wouldn't go so far as to call those people imbeciles—I think there are other people I'd call that, but maybe that's a different topic.
The question is, why does it seem like people with these exact traits always rise to the surface in a democracy? Is it possible we are blaming the players when the game itself is flawed? Or is this just a localized issue here in the States? Personally, I tend to think that democracy is an extremely inadequate form of governance. |
It's also worth noting that maybe only about 13% of people (or perhaps even less) truly decide anything in politics. About a third are just resigned spectators, and then there's roughly half who act like sheep, being led by that 13% through various manipulations designed to toy with them and force them into submission. Democracy is a system where, in reality, about 10% of the people rule and manage things, while 50% live under the illusion that they have a say, and 40% know perfectly well they have no influence at all and just stay home. Actually, even under communism, there was only about 10% membership in the party, right? Except, I guess, those 50% didn't suffer from the illusion of choice, because, as Mark Torres14 already pointed out, in a communist system you could only choose between black bread or white bread—which most people can see is beneath their capacity for actual decision-making. But even though nowadays you have more varieties of bread, you still aren't the one deciding on that bread; you are just placed in the position of a passive consumer who can pick from a palette that someone else has already curated for you.
Does the development of a new version of Windows happen democratically, where even the most casual users are consulted? Or do Gates and his inner circle implement features based on the preferences of the massive corporations they partner with and who pay them? Even Linux and Open Source have limitations, since only those with specific technical know-how participate in its creation, which is once again just a small minority.
Otherwise, the idea that we should ask ordinary people what services they want and what they think, and then decide based on that, is probably a utopia. The "big players" simply have no need for such things. They just sweep the little people away like dust off a sideboard and move on.☕
