In our current culture, I often feel like the most rebellious thing that I can say is "I don't feel the need to share my opinion on that." I only have expertise in three topics: professional basketball, American poetry since 1950, and Native American life, culture, and politics. Other than that, I'm only a student.
when a culture turns its system of formal accusation into a social ritual for generating its political unity it sets in motion a pattern very similar to the crucifixion.
Publications like yours are the antidote to the content glut. I will always be jealous of the title you came up with. It is at once remarkable, comforting, and a little discouraging when I find writers on Substack who are doing what I came here to do, but about 28X better.
Go find that dog. Then come back here and write about it. Yours is a needed voice. The thirsting and the lonely, exhausted by the unending cacophony of desperate and insatiable attention monsters, will find their way to it, and cling gratefully to the wisdom you share.
Content culture, I've been calling it. I tell my friends, it's like a stampede. A random, directionless explosion. I believe all social media has become a bottomless pit. You could scroll through IG reels for hours and never come to an end. Some girl somewhere is always dancing. Some foodie is filming their food. Some singer has a camera pointed at their throats. It's like mirrors at 45° to each other, infinite spiel.
And for some of us, the effect has been horrifying. You have whole populations of youths whose attention spans cannot hold a candle to goldfish's. Then there's the convenience of the escape from real-life and the very real possibility of getting addicted to that escape. Some of us know, for sure, we are slowly being hollowed out; rather than us feeding on the spectacle, it feels like we are the ones being fed somehow to it.
Since I self-diagnosed myself as the get-addicted-easy-type, I've had to put habits in place to stop myself from leaping off the deep end. I set timers on all my social media apps and respect them, which is a miracle because I'm not exactly a bastion of discipline. What I think happened is that I had become exhausted with myself for not listening to myself. There was something screaming at me inside me. Divine, it kept wailing, you're wasting away. You're wasting away inside other people's fantasies, and your dreams have grown gaunt and mangy from lack of nutrition. And what time do you have to feed yourself actual food when you've become a fast-food junkie? It's fast, it's easy, it entertains the senses. But it's a trap isn't it? How many times have you come out of the rabbithole of content and regret so profoundly the time you've spent not becoming?
From my experience, the turning point was President Kennedy's assassination, it began the hiding behind a curtain of appearances. It carried on through Vietnam, Watergate, Iran hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, and on and on. The final straw for me as a Southern Democrat was when many the national African-American political organizations declared Bill Clinton the first Black president. I felt that it was such an insult to every African-American person who have made my life better. As a result, I left the party. Twenty years later, I wrote The Spectacle of the Real - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real - that captures much of what you are describing. It feels like all this is an aberration. Though, I think it is the logical outcome of many streams of belief and how those beliefs are organizationally structured as I recently described here - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/synthesis-transition-to-the-future. This is why it is so easy to say, "The math works."
In setting free machines of endless creation we have also freed ourselves of the need to create anything other than that which represents us most purely, for in a world of all possible content the value of our work is no longer in accessibility and accuracy but instead in self revelation and connection
Man, your writing just continues to be a guiding light for me. I’m in the process of “searching for the dog” within the music industry. It’s a lot to make sense of, but it helps to have minds like yours helping to untangle the collective knots. Thank you Luke 🙏🏼
In a sense, when a person is lost in life, information-foraging is a substitute for meaning and purpose. It's like a blanket we put over ourselves to feel warm but what we actually want is the warmth of another person. I can relate with that - after the day is done and I've tried to substitute meaningful activities with my job or my studies - I sit down on the couch, numb, and scroll through the endless sea of content. There's little conscious awareness going on, both in starting the binge nor in continuing it - it's all habitual. A Soylent of meaning.
In a speech entitled "The World of Flesh and the Devil," Auden spoke of three personality types - the careful conformist whose successes in life lead to nothing but ulcers, the decadent rebel whose brilliance is snuffed out by excess or suicide, and the saintly nonconformist who idolizes only freedom. (In Auden's view, colleges should strive to produce more graduates of the latter type; alas......)
Susan, I try to be skeptical without becoming cynical. The challenge seems to be, not their are lies and deception coming from the halls of power, but rather so many people that I know believe things uncritically. I try to do my own research, trust people that I personally know, and then try not to allow myself to be pushed into a corner. I'd also say that I try to be as skeptical of my own opinions as I am of others. More than anything I want to maintain my integrity, so I don't jump on bandwagon and toot my horn when I shouldn't. Thanks for your comment.
In our current culture, I often feel like the most rebellious thing that I can say is "I don't feel the need to share my opinion on that." I only have expertise in three topics: professional basketball, American poetry since 1950, and Native American life, culture, and politics. Other than that, I'm only a student.
when a culture turns its system of formal accusation into a social ritual for generating its political unity it sets in motion a pattern very similar to the crucifixion.
Publications like yours are the antidote to the content glut. I will always be jealous of the title you came up with. It is at once remarkable, comforting, and a little discouraging when I find writers on Substack who are doing what I came here to do, but about 28X better.
Go find that dog. Then come back here and write about it. Yours is a needed voice. The thirsting and the lonely, exhausted by the unending cacophony of desperate and insatiable attention monsters, will find their way to it, and cling gratefully to the wisdom you share.
Content culture, I've been calling it. I tell my friends, it's like a stampede. A random, directionless explosion. I believe all social media has become a bottomless pit. You could scroll through IG reels for hours and never come to an end. Some girl somewhere is always dancing. Some foodie is filming their food. Some singer has a camera pointed at their throats. It's like mirrors at 45° to each other, infinite spiel.
And for some of us, the effect has been horrifying. You have whole populations of youths whose attention spans cannot hold a candle to goldfish's. Then there's the convenience of the escape from real-life and the very real possibility of getting addicted to that escape. Some of us know, for sure, we are slowly being hollowed out; rather than us feeding on the spectacle, it feels like we are the ones being fed somehow to it.
Since I self-diagnosed myself as the get-addicted-easy-type, I've had to put habits in place to stop myself from leaping off the deep end. I set timers on all my social media apps and respect them, which is a miracle because I'm not exactly a bastion of discipline. What I think happened is that I had become exhausted with myself for not listening to myself. There was something screaming at me inside me. Divine, it kept wailing, you're wasting away. You're wasting away inside other people's fantasies, and your dreams have grown gaunt and mangy from lack of nutrition. And what time do you have to feed yourself actual food when you've become a fast-food junkie? It's fast, it's easy, it entertains the senses. But it's a trap isn't it? How many times have you come out of the rabbithole of content and regret so profoundly the time you've spent not becoming?
FIND THE DOG. STEAL THE DOG. Thanks.
From my experience, the turning point was President Kennedy's assassination, it began the hiding behind a curtain of appearances. It carried on through Vietnam, Watergate, Iran hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, and on and on. The final straw for me as a Southern Democrat was when many the national African-American political organizations declared Bill Clinton the first Black president. I felt that it was such an insult to every African-American person who have made my life better. As a result, I left the party. Twenty years later, I wrote The Spectacle of the Real - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real - that captures much of what you are describing. It feels like all this is an aberration. Though, I think it is the logical outcome of many streams of belief and how those beliefs are organizationally structured as I recently described here - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/synthesis-transition-to-the-future. This is why it is so easy to say, "The math works."
As someone is part of this content machine, I’m tired. And I ask myself the same question -- to what end? I’ll be looking for the dog too.
In setting free machines of endless creation we have also freed ourselves of the need to create anything other than that which represents us most purely, for in a world of all possible content the value of our work is no longer in accessibility and accuracy but instead in self revelation and connection
Man, your writing just continues to be a guiding light for me. I’m in the process of “searching for the dog” within the music industry. It’s a lot to make sense of, but it helps to have minds like yours helping to untangle the collective knots. Thank you Luke 🙏🏼
In a sense, when a person is lost in life, information-foraging is a substitute for meaning and purpose. It's like a blanket we put over ourselves to feel warm but what we actually want is the warmth of another person. I can relate with that - after the day is done and I've tried to substitute meaningful activities with my job or my studies - I sit down on the couch, numb, and scroll through the endless sea of content. There's little conscious awareness going on, both in starting the binge nor in continuing it - it's all habitual. A Soylent of meaning.
In a speech entitled "The World of Flesh and the Devil," Auden spoke of three personality types - the careful conformist whose successes in life lead to nothing but ulcers, the decadent rebel whose brilliance is snuffed out by excess or suicide, and the saintly nonconformist who idolizes only freedom. (In Auden's view, colleges should strive to produce more graduates of the latter type; alas......)
Susan, I try to be skeptical without becoming cynical. The challenge seems to be, not their are lies and deception coming from the halls of power, but rather so many people that I know believe things uncritically. I try to do my own research, trust people that I personally know, and then try not to allow myself to be pushed into a corner. I'd also say that I try to be as skeptical of my own opinions as I am of others. More than anything I want to maintain my integrity, so I don't jump on bandwagon and toot my horn when I shouldn't. Thanks for your comment.
At least you are responsive to the cry of dogs.
Luke, you are the only writer that makes any sense to me these days.
“And there are many things that I’d like to sit there for a year first, pondering, before I have anything worthwhile to say. If I ever will.”
Many journalists secretly wish for this.
Have I understood this? You're saying our constant need to comment, immediately, has made us unable to contemplate ideas first. That's interesting.