You Must Focus, Grasshopper.
One of the most important losses in this modern era is an ability for the average person to stay focused. By nature of our fast-food, instant-access society, compounded by the immediacy of “Internet Culture,” human beings are more united and informed and less unified or focused than ever before.
The average person folds under the pressure of a myriad sources of input, and we see an increase in claims of children, and even adults, who “suffer” from “attention deficit disorder.” It seems the price of digitizing the globe comes at the cost of paying attention.
It really makes no difference what area we’re talking about — whether topics like spirituality and religion, or government and finance. Information overload is causing human beings to become devoid of conviction, lacking in motivation, and act with a propensity toward the obscure. The result of this disparity of position and purpose is a society with little ability to organize or prosper.
Do you think this is true? If so, is it by design or just happenstance?
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2009/10/14 23:52 -0700Z
No I don’t think it is true.
I do not subscribe to the fiction of an “average person”. I make the reasonable assumption that everyone I recognize as human is in some way like me, with unknowable depths. I refuse to judge or generalize.
I do not accept the leading role of journalists in telling me how to interpret what’s going on in the world. They are part of a business whose main income is from advertising. It’s a shocking fact, but one we must live with, that our economic systems rely on people having jobs, and jobs largely depend on misrepresentation to increase economic activity.
I will accept that the herd instinct within us is manipulated to let others interpret the world on our behalf, giving journalists the role of voicing simple themes designed to represent the reader’s conscience about the things which happen in the world.
I don’t know how to distinguish design from happenstance when we are talking of society. I rarely believe in conspiracy theories, so I suppose my vote goes towards happenstance.
You say “Information overload is causing human beings to become devoid of conviction, lacking in motivation, and act with a propensity toward the obscure.”
This is an interesting statement and I wonder where it came from. I see being “devoid of conviction” as a virtue. But where is it to be found? I see too many convictions, especially in America. “Lack of motivation”? Again, a virtue, in my book. What kind of motivation do you mourn for? We’ve had decades of motivational books, many of which have become best-sellers. To buy such a book one must be motivated, surely.
“To act with a propensity toward the obscure.” This phrase fascinates me. What do you mean?
2009/10/15 10:24 -0700Z
I don’t necessarily promote, and certainly don’t believe in, the idea that individuals are somehow inherently non-individualistic either. In haste to express my point, my use of “average person” is probably more accurately transcribed as “majority of people.” But, I didn’t say that in the first place, so it is what it is.
I also resist blindly accepting a viewpoint from a faction of humanity whose careers are aimed at expressing opinions under the guise of objectivity. None of us are truly objective, no matter how hard we try. Even so, my point here has little to do with journalists in particular, but more with “modern” cultural and social tendencies.
My triple-compounded statement about information overload is actually intended to be compounded, in sequence, to support my point. Because the “modern majority” is submersed in widely differing and mostly conflicting viewpoints, I think it’s understandable how people can easily be persuaded into a form of tolerance, based not on personal principle, but rather from a stance of something like, “everything is right and wrong,” or, “nothing is right or wrong,” or even more surreptitiously, “who am I to judge?”
If neither you or I are to judge, based on our own experience and understanding, the ideas of “self” and/or “ego” are necessarily tossed aside. Even in cases where our conviction might be to “not act on our convictions,” by taking a stance of non-commitment, we have in effect discarded our convictions entirely. In my opinion, the mantra of “tolerance” does just that to a majority of people in modern cultures, and I do not personally view this as a virtue, but rather a lack of virtue. If we have no conviction of belief, then we have no foundation from which to live our lives, and thus our lives are lived with no motivation.
Without conviction or motivation, our efforts become futile expressions of “nothing-ness,” which in some circles is deemed as virtuous. If the goal is nothing-ness, then I suppose there is no problem with the way things are going in modernity: a propensity toward the obscure.
Obscurity, as I’m sure you know, is a state of unknown, unclear ambiguity. When we lack conviction, we lack motivation, and without either of these, obscurity is the natural path.
Perhaps we (as an intelligent human species) are destined on a path full-circle, back to our roots as mere animals. If that is true, then obscurity, lack of motivation, and an absence of conviction are our due course. However, if we are to continue Evolving, vice DEvolving, is it not in our best interests to have purpose, motivation, and conviction? And, if that’s true… why does “modern” life cultivate just the opposite?
2009/10/17 10:55 -0700Z
Tim, I don’t know where to start! It seems to me you lack conviction and motivation and are descending into obscurity. I think you should stop thinking it’s a problem and live your life as your instincts and not your overheated brain dictate.
As for me, I am perfectly happy without judging, motivation, conviction or clarity. I am a “mere animal”, recognising that my prime duty is to keep myself safe. However, in my lack of judgement I am not separate from other creatures. I have no need of right and wrong for I don’t preside over any court. I don’t even have a concept of evil, but I take care to stay away from trouble, and stay close to what is beautiful, kind and loving.
It doesn’t bother me if I am in a minority or majority, or part of some group that’s misbehaving or sorry for itself (oh that relates to your latest post, but never mind).
It doesn’t bother me if in someone’s judgment, others are unable to focus, or are overweight, or destroying the planet with damaging behaviour and so on and so forth. Those who want religion, let them. Those who want to watch TV all day, let them.
I see life differently: that I can focus (as much as I can focus) on what I can do (as little as I may be able to do). That life is a stage, on which to perform my art, and let that art be inspired by the God within me, the higher power, whatever you want to call it, of which I am a part. That I can let my overheated brain be silent so that I don’t get in the way of whatever miracle it pleases the universe to manifest through me, around me, through someone else or whatever. Someone else’s joy is my joy. Someone else’s pain may or may not affect me. Let it be.
2009/10/19 10:03 -0700Z
That would be convenient: to just forget about it all, and trod down my own path irrespective of anything else happening around me. I could just ignore what does not please me, and embrace what does…
But that reminds me of the Mary Poppins analogy of the Woman who Feeds the Birds, and the little boy who wanted to spend his only tuppence on feeding the birds rather than investing it wisely in the Bank. He could be prudent and calculating, investing his small talent in the Bank, where it could grow and be part of something much bigger and impacting on the world… or he could buy a small pouch of crumbs to scatter for the birds and end up with nothing but… fat birds.
I am doing what I know, Vincent: questioning, seeking, pondering, trying to understand, and sharing the process with people like you, who then consider and formulate their own positions in whatever way suits them. If my only goal was simple, self-sustaining existence, and I acted accordingly, what benefit would my existence have on the rest of the world around me?