Protection of my Literal Selection
Within today's technology the aptitude to read is replaced by the Viral Video mindset
There is a certain amount of freedom I still feel within my writings that I hadn't planned for. I know within today's age (my generation and those after me) the mass majority of humanity (specifically my peers) on the Internet are training themselves to simply pay attention to what they are looking at for a small allotted amount of time. It's not just the Internet tho, headline news and various outlets for information are setting themselves up the same. Ten seconds to a minute is all it takes to read a headline on cnn.com, or watch headlines news and get the gist of it. Such access to information has never been so abundant to humanity in the entire time line of humanity. A Youtube video here, a viral video there, a quick blog, a minor rant, a small poem on someones myspace a text message on your phone. If you see the pattern we are learning to live by here it's a dangerous one that I feel everyone should be aware of. Be aware of how you are now training your mind and brain to accept superfluous information in such short timelines as the norm. How you are now redirecting your attention to operate in shorter allotments for a longer period in your life. Gone are the days of reading a newspaper for my peers, the hours it would take to read front to back just doesn't interest my generation anymore, they just don't have the time (as tho they are so busy doing nothing).. They'd rather get their surface information and then rest on what they perceived in a headline and a quick skim as being "in the know". Without doing research for themselves or even looking up another perspective of that information in which they will soon share. More then likely setting up to see the truth within a one minute video rather then 20 minutes worth of reading and then reflecting upon that reading to associate the news to their own life. Dangerous to say the least.
But define "in the know" to me. Is it just being able to converse on the base of the topic within your societal norm?(cliq) Does one need to know the minutia of all the exacting details of the news stories in order to feel they have enough information to warrant sharing or engaging in a conversation about the aforementioned topic? Or does simply knowing the least amount of information needed to articulate oneself in a conversation, now the societal norm? Is that all it takes to feel knowledgeable in the most advanced civilization ever? Has this fallacy of surface knowledge actually replaced inherent applied learning skills all for the facade of looking like we know what we are talking about all to protect our own ego? Ahhh but isn't that modern America wrapped up into a nice summarization there? The problem with summarization is a easy one to see. Within cramming information into a shorter time slot details are missed, it then is easy to turn a story into something it's not. Omitting details isn't the same as lying, but it's marketing at it's best. And that's what news has now turned into, a marketing of sorts to lure you in with information that is easy to digest, quick to learn, and what you want to hear. All for the glory of Rupert Murdock to turn a buck in advertising dollars to allow him to feel justified in his life before he dies. All while misdirecting your attention against you, distract you away from real news. The Paris Hilton in jail on the news over the 6 deaths of U.S soldiers on June 14th 2007 in Iraq. Is that real news? No, but it's news America now prefers to share in gossip instead of the realist news that isn't so "fun" to listen or tell. The attraction within the literal distraction should wake you up and make you refuse to dance this dance.
Another pattern that I see is our inability to engage strangers, peers, friends, others in the art of conversation now. Nobody applies themselves anymore to dig deeper into the dialect people offer. People seem to get offended now that you simply do not take their word from them based off the surface knowledge they have acquired. That isn't even conversating actually, that's just spewing your opinion and asking people to accept it as the holy truth without any rebuttal back. That's called preaching. Also that you knowing how they acquired the information offends them, because you use the same means to gather the same information they do and know it's liable to fraud.(everything you read on the net is true?) That somehow digging deeper and conversing with them will make you realize their weakness, that they are a front simply regurgitating what they've only seen on the Internet. Scared they will realize what you are trying to do, they simply restate their opinion again and offer no more to go on. Gone is the ability to articulate what you see, and put your own spin on it, and then share that with peers in a story of fashion. Gone is the discipline it takes to tell a story based off your perceptions to share news. I have an analogy I use to explain this to me. It's the small talk people are good at vs the conversations people are bad at. Small talk is automatic banter through years of shared experiences that comes easy to people. Sports talk, kid talk, car talk etc..These conversations are shallow and filled with such boring obviousities I can finish the entire conversation before they are done saying hi. Actual Conversations are where there is shared interest and a topic which is about life and not the norm. A perfect example is conversing with a stranger over the aftereffects of wearing different colored shades. Discussion took place over the well known rods and cones in the eyes for the obvious physical effects, but then mitigated to the philosophical personal outlook linked to the glasses.. One can see the obvious differences between that and asking if your kid graduated college yet. One is easy and almost a statement not expecting a story back, the other takes work, observation, rational and experience.
Before the Internet we had TV, radio and newspapers. TV, Radio and newspapers shared a time line because not everyone was happy with getting their information from one source. Even tho there are different channels on the TV, the TV is still seen as one source.. regulated by the government of course. Newspaper still offered that idealism of freedom hearkened back to the early days when people fought for freedom of the press. Not the modern bloggers pretending to be rent-a-cop journalists and expecting the same rights as professionals. Before movable print, were public postings and a public town Cryer. Where the town Cryer would be responsible for telling the news in an orderly structured manner to help facilitate the knowledge of which he was hired to reiterate. A story was told from the town cryer, in which other people then had to tell others and of course within that telling is humanities artistic spin on how they heard that information. The "he did this" turned into a question that insighted conversation, "he did this" into "He did that?!". But that's how news traveled back then. Granted it wasn't "here and now and oh so convenient" but because of that people took their time to tell a story. People used stories and stories of news as entertainment, reconfirmation of their social status, direction, and education for the entire existence of humanity up until roughly the 21th century. Back then, when someone called people out on what they heard, they knew their information was only as reliable as the person whom told it and didn't get offended when called out. Which until the Internet a person had a finger to point to where they heard/saw it from and thus pass the buck of responsibility from their err. Now it's just "I read it on the net" as tho that's supposed to enforce respect.
Which is why I think people get upset when you call them on information they recant now. Since you cannot point to a single source on the Internet to validate your story, and then look at the man behind that mask who posted that information.(Ad Hominem attack) People now assume anything they read on the Internet is now the truth which they discovered on their own (Since there is no TV face or newspaper title to the information they spew forth) they label it as "their information".. I have a constant argument with a friend of mine specifically about 9/11 and the multitude of conspiracy theory's now running rampant throughout the Internet. My friend gets down right upset and attacks me, my education, social status etc when I call him on his superfluous information in which he gathered from only 1 spot... The Internet. He fails to see how the information he's discovered on his own does not bear the striking truth to me that it does to him. I often tell him counter-arguments against his own truth in story form, from the same source he gets his information (Internet) and tell him my information has as much validity as his own, and only his opinion of the matter is making it the truth for him. Failing to link that in the philosophical sense his frustrations extrude out into a form of show and tell.. Where now he is expecting me to watch the dozens of disposable video's and blogs that has melded his mind into the shape I see before me. I refuse of course, and simply ask him to articulate his point in his own words without copying and pasting, to tell a story. Lost is that skill on him as he'll always revert to use examples of videos (if you saw the video I saw, you'd think different) and wants me to watch them to help him sell his own point to me... I find it disrespectful that he cannot reiterate to me in his own words what he considers a personal religion. A prime example of the modern mindset failing himself. Easy access to the quick information has now left him unable not only to recant his own point in his own words, but puts him at a loss when put on spot with doubt to his point without the information at his fingertips to help his point.
So why is the art of conversation lost on modern America whom also chooses to embrace this new media outlet (internet) as the De Facto standard to gather any and all information required for a base social skill in today? Attention. Attention is what directs your thoughts, controls your mind. It's a learned ability one should be perfecting, enhancing, honing as they age, until the day they die. There is no top tier, end of the line, pinnacle of attention one can achieve. One must constantly strive to use it, master it and never let it drift off and meander on it's own. But that is exactly what is happening today and why the internet is perfect for it. People of course blame others, TV, video games, music, genetics on the failings of the master of attention today. But it's too late, they've named it, created a pill to cure it, yet... it still exists. Which is the beauty of A.D.D. It's self created, self directed and the more you ignore it the worse it gets. Which is why there is no cure for it. There is no teachings in giving an adult or even a child a pill to help them focus. I know, I was a dumb kid once, I set fires, and killed bugs got C's for grades.. I know how distracting new life is to a kid. But I grew as a person through experience (time) and perception/observation, and I expect everyone to do the same as an adult.. Which is why there is no cure for it. A doctor will prescribe a youth or even an adult a chemical compound created by man to turn on or off some chemical precursor in the head that they "think" causes the lack of attention. Again very dangerous, as you are allowing men who admit they don't know the human mind enough to write out a mathematical equation to explain it, to turn switches on and off within it. The now illegal prefrontal lobotomy experiments of the 30's-50's are brought back to a Politically Correct era. As that's all these pills are, FDA regulated and approved experiments because no doctor has the balls to call out a patient and tell them it's their own fault for their attention problems. Which IMO would be far better then a pill, but they'd more then likely end up getting sued for stating their own opinion on the matter. So now follow me on this. Now you have people who suffer low attention span issues(admittedly, because nobody forces you to take pills) following a routine set up to propagate short attention, on pills to fight that.. A systematic self repeating cyclic loop of distraction.
Getting back to the lost art of conversation (A.D.D kicked in and I drifted off) and why it is important to notice that loss. Conversation is not just some temporary modern social construct only recently recognized. A recent social construct in the history of humanity is Internet, TV, cellphones, Partially hydrogenated oils, rock and roll etc. Actual movable print is still not even that old in the time line being invented roughly in 1041A.D and most of the social philosophies we still adhere to today, were created when the author had to hand write it all (Socrates, Freud, Descartes, Jung, Marx etc). Another recent social construct is the development of temporary friends. Gone are the days of lifetime friends as most with a friendship older then 5 years is becoming rarer and rarer. I discussed this with a peer (also a lifetime friend) and we both agree this relatively new mindset towards friendship is also set up due to our failings to recognize the shortening of attention. And because we're paying attention less and less our society seems to be getting faster and faster paced. It's also a lot of work to maintain lifetime friends. A lifetime friend would require constant new stories to be told of unshared experiences. No 30 year old friends are still recanting how much fun high school was, or how they can't wait till the next class reunion to show others how they defeated their earlier self. They aren't doing the same things or talking the same verbose as they were a mere 10 years ago. It would be impossible to maintain a lifetime friend is that were the case. Boredom from the repetitious nature of the same conversations would cause a falling out and eventual departure. Leaving the person in search for someone looking for interest in a mindset that is now 10 years old that would be new to the new friend. (again self propagating the same mindset that hasn't changed) Hence the new construct of the rotating door friendships. It always reminds me of a new girlfriend, how it truly amazes me how many stories I have amassed over the years to recall to this new interest. Of course I am aware that if I know this female for a period of time, she'll have heard all the stories and it'll be up to me to create new ones to keep the relationship alive. And her unto I (or so I expect) and want. As I never have the fear that I will run out of new discoveries or observations to share.
So where is the title to my story? How do I have protection of my literal selection and what does that mean?. Time and length my friends. I of course wish at times to share my writings (my mindset) with peers and others, and of course most my the writings have a length similar to this dissertation. Most readers get a paragraph or two into it and then start to skim. Upon requesting a conversation from my peers as to the nature of my writings the answers are always one in the same... "I tried to read the whole thing" " I skimmed through it".. "it was too damn long Kiehl!!!", as they look for me to summarize it verbally to them because they gave up so easy. While I know if I made a 2 minute clever video summarizing this, they would be able to watch the entire thing. Not the 10 minutes it takes to read this entire thing (I timed it). I never would have even postulated that the problem for my verbose is a couple pages of words especially from "friends" and asking them for 10 minutes of their time and attention. Length to me is reading Descartes writings on a singular mindset on one topic, in which he filled an entire book! Here I lack that obsessive ability and my writings are usually summarized even to me, because I'm aware that asking people to read.. has now become a chore in life people don't opt for. Within that realization I have a relative knowledge that I can spew forth any verbose about anyone at anytime, and all I need to do to protect me from judgement from others is create a long enough dissertation to manipulate their short attention span in which they've created. They should be offended by my conscious manipulation of their weakened mindset, not of the observations I've made about their obvious routine patterns. However most are unable to put the math together to know what it is i'm doing. Thus I am protected.
I also see the inherent modern nature within my mindset, that editing my writings to even myself so I don't have so long to read through in order to re-read my own writings.. An interesting quandary to say the least, especially since I consider even myself that of average intellect. I justify it as a blend of old style writings with a new style injected to keep the attention of my peers. Language is pliable like that, and one cannot be judged for using and changing it for their own purposes. Upon reflection i'm forced to wonder if those who opt to live in the temporary here and now, those that choose to ignore the fundamental differences that separate us from other mammals, those that minds are in constant state of unorganized chaos are onto something, or completely out of their minds.
© Kiehl 2007