Not all books are worth reading. Some are really bad. Others are so-so, and there are a few powerful, interesting, intense that can change you forever. To write a good book is a big thing. Take "The Gulag Archipelago" for example, it brought down the URSS; or the Journal of Anne Frank, or The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, or 1984, or The Art of War. These are books written by people too. Why can't I write something like that? Because I do not have the skill... the motivation? Haven't lived through experiences worth telling? Is my life too mundane? Am I too conformist? Should I rebel or fight something or someone, or join a cause, or... my head spinning already. If it's not my cause it's not worth it. Each of these authors had a sense of purpose, a desire to pass on their story, their perspective, or experience. It was important for them to tell what they lived through. If I ask myself: What is really important for you? do I get an original answer? Huxley's words strike me like a slap in the face:
> There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
It's like this today. At your fingertips you have overwhelming amounts of info & knowledge, entertainment, news, games, film, culture, and the means to express and what do we put out there? cats. trivialities, banalities. TikTok. No, I'm not against TikTok or insta or whatever. However, in your feel, you'll see people running for their lives in Afghanistan and the moment after, singing cats or some ridiculous shit like that.
I am starting to see how these technologies make us more obedient and slightly sociopathic. The Facebook and youtube algorithms are optimized for maximal limbic resonance. Sensational content is more engaging and therefore resurfaced. There is a constant context switching for the user when using these platforms and this I believe denatures our emotional response.
Emotions and elaborate reflections do not have time to emerge in the mind of a typical user with limited attention spans. In the end, we become incapable of feeling, of telling truth from lie, and of living purposeful lives, and it's all good until it's bad.
> There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
It's like this today. At your fingertips you have overwhelming amounts of info & knowledge, entertainment, news, games, film, culture, and the means to express and what do we put out there? cats. trivialities, banalities. TikTok. No, I'm not against TikTok or insta or whatever. However, in your feel, you'll see people running for their lives in Afghanistan and the moment after, singing cats or some ridiculous shit like that.
I am starting to see how these technologies make us more obedient and slightly sociopathic. The Facebook and youtube algorithms are optimized for maximal limbic resonance. Sensational content is more engaging and therefore resurfaced. There is a constant context switching for the user when using these platforms and this I believe denatures our emotional response.
Emotions and elaborate reflections do not have time to emerge in the mind of a typical user with limited attention spans. In the end, we become incapable of feeling, of telling truth from lie, and of living purposeful lives, and it's all good until it's bad.
pevenjoe