What is Knowledge

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I mentioned formal education only because I thought it would be a common response. I did think your "knowledge" connotation is close to how we think of formal education.

Well, I'm not so sure I get what you mean by my knowledge connotation.
In my first post I was merely referring to fiction works that had more definite meaning and purpose and were meant to be edifying and instructive to a specific community, as opposed to fiction works that tend to try to be more subjective or ambiguous, or purely for the purposes of entertainment, escapism, or for anesthesia. I wasn't trying to imply that they were better or that they had more to offer, or that people should study these texts, or even that they had anything to offer to the modern reader.

I first thought about starting this thread while commenting on the Ben Franklin thread, specifically when I was thinking about how Franklin used poetry and books to develop his system of morals as well as to develop his communication and writing skills. I was also thinking about the enlightenment and copyright laws. Copyright laws were designed to facilitate the spread of knowledge. When most people argue against copyright, they do so in the argument that information wants to be free, and that the spread of knowledge should not be restricted. This then got me thinking about a quote from Ursula Le Guinn, who said that information should be free, but that works created for entertainment purposes cannot be rightly considered information.

However, I did not want this to be a copyright thread, since copyright discussions seems to be everywhere on these forums. What I wanted to do was go to the basics; before we discuss the purposes of copyright and its effect on the spread and dissemination of knowledge, we first need to answer the question, what is knowledge? In Franklin's time, when the U.S. copyright laws were created, almost all works were created either to educate, or they were forms of poetry that could be imitated and used to improve ones own writing and thinking. With very little fiction, and most works being didactic, the founding fathers found it valuable that copyright law should find the best balance to encourage the creation and dissemination of all works. Of course the general uses of fiction has changed, so I think it is important to ask the question again in modern times.

Originally Posted by Penforhire

From your extended discussion I imagine you would really enjoy Robert Pirsig's books (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals). He delves strongly into related topics. I liked Zen more than Lila, maybe too much 'telling-not-showing' in Lila.

Thanks for the recommendation. I have heard about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but this is the first time I have heard of Lila. Is Zen a good read? I do not know much about Zen; it appeared to me to be one of those superficial meditations that are frequently published by lazy amateur philosophers looking to cash in, as well as one of the numerous books on "zen;" you know, the multitude of books and blogs published about zen that actually have no real understanding of zen, but use it as a catchword for what people think are eastern and alternative philosophies, or philosophies of nonmaterialism, in order to exploit people's desire to escape the rat race and find contentment.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

In Franklin's time, when the U.S. copyright laws were created, almost all works were created either to educate, or they were forms of poetry that could be imitated and used to improve ones own writing and thinking. With very little fiction, and most works being didactic, the founding fathers found it valuable that copyright law should find the best balance to encourage the creation and dissemination of all works. Of course the general uses of fiction has changed, so I think it is important to ask the question again in modern times.

All work is educational, to think otherwise is wrong. Your trash fiction is my life changing epiphany, when you understand this we can move on.

Fiction, telling stories. THE DRIVING FORCE OF THE CULTURE. Our society is crafted by the fictions that we tell ourselves and others. This is the source of the knowledge of which you speak and it is EVERYWHERE!!

The founding fathers were regurgitating the ideals of the monied interests of the time. There is another way.

[TGS]

This thread is ploughing forward as if there is an agreed definition of "knowledge" - which of course there isn't. Consequently the contributors are simply talking past each other. So, here's an attempted definition of knowledge: knowledge is justified true belief. Now, there are all sorts of contested terms in there - "justified", "true" and "belief" - but maybe tackling the meanings of those terms we can come to some agreement as to what knowledge is.

[Nexutix]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

I like your definition of knowledge. I do not, however, agree with your argument that fiction is a less efficient method of conveying knowledge than a textbook. Many people learn and retain information better when it is conveyed as part of a meaningful narrative.

True. But by non-efficient I mean in terms of time. I totally agree that narrative and storyline reading makes you retain it LONGER; but may not acquire FASTER.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by TGS

This thread is ploughing forward as if there is an agreed definition of "knowledge" - which of course there isn't. Consequently the contributors are simply talking past each other. So, here's an attempted definition of knowledge: knowledge is justified true belief. Now, there are all sorts of contested terms in there - "justified", "true" and "belief" - but maybe tackling the meanings of those terms we can come to some agreement as to what knowledge is.

That's the definition my philosophy prof used when I was in college.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Postmodernism isn't bunk, far from it. The theories of the postmodernist era have allowed us to abandon theory itself and move into the new era.
I agree that objectivity does exist but only if you take into view the entire universe. But the universe might be infinite, which makes things a little weird.

What new era are we in? Postmodernism denies that we experience any objective truths and proposes that there are only local truths. If there are only local truths, then there can be no such thing as an "era." What you talk about is progress, and postmodernism denies that progress exists, because for progress to exist there must be an objective reality to measure it with.

In an earlier post you said that ones persons trash is another persons epiphany. But how can there be any personal revelations, any notion of progress, without some notion of objective progress or truth? You might have a so-called epiphany, but it is a worthless, rationalistic epiphany. Any truth that is not measured against some objective truth is a rationalization to justify ones own behavior and beliefs. That is not epiphany, but self-indulgence.

Postmodernism has not allowed us to abandon theory itself, since postmodernism is in itself a theory. It essentially states that there is nothing but the interpretation.

Postmodernism is self-contradicting and intellectually lazy. It says there are no metanarratives, yet the statement that there are no metanarratives is a metanarrative of metanarratives. Postmodernism is an all-encompassing explanation of reality, even though it says that reality can never be known.

Postmodernism proposes that "there is no objective truth," which is an objective proposition. It denies objective propositions with an objective proposition.

Postmodernism says we cannot know objective truth, and even if there was an objective truth we would not know how to identify it anyways. But to say that there is no objective truth would require that you be able to identify the objective truth that there is no objective truth.

Postmodernism says that our truths are the truths created by the local communities that we inhabit, that define us. But which communities? Everyone inhabits multiple communites, from linguistic communities, to religious communities, to social communities, to work communities, to religious communities.

Even if we cannot know reality for certain, reality still imposes itself upon us. You can deny the proposition that certain foods are bad for you, but the reality of obesity and obesity related diseases will impose itself upon you. You can deny the existence of space and time, yet you are still confined by the reality of space and time. You can argue that your knowledge is that arsenic will give you super powers, until you take the arsenic and die. Objective reality has a funny way of imposing itself upon us.

Now, you might say that the things I talk about do not apply to art and literature, but to do so would be to admit that there is such a thing as objective reality, and that it can be known. Your merely saying that objective reality does not apply to art and literature, which is an intellectually lazy argument. There is a reality in language. Language contains a set of signs with a commonly agreed upon meaning. Without objective knowledge and reality in language, communities and civilization would be impossible, because it would be impossible for people to communicate with each other.

Postmodernism is the philosophy of consumerism, hedonism, nihilism, elitism, and narcissism

It is consumerist because it says that the only beliefs that matter are our own beliefs. This conveniently means that whatever choices we make, whatever we consume, however we consume, is good. The consequences of our consumption is good no matter what, even if our consumption destroys the earth, even if our consumption causes suffering elsewhere in the world, even if our consumption is really just an attempt to find fulfillment and happiness in buying stuff, even if our consumption ultimately leads to our own demise, it does not matter, because there is no truth but the local truth. Postmodernism arises in a time of almost unlimited choice, but it is the perspective of those, who, rather than trying to make good choices, decide that all choices are good.

It is the philosophy of hedonism, because ultimately, if there are no objective truths, then the only thing left to strive for is our own pleasure.

It is the philosophy of nihilism because it denies that any such thing as morality can exist. It proclaims to be a vaccine against totalitarianism, but ultimately postmodernism leads to totalitarianism. Without any objective truths or morals, the only thing you have left is the morality of raw power. Suppose somebody wants to impose their will on you. They could do so, and you could not argue against it, because everything is permissible. You think it is a cool philosophy because it means you can get free stuff. But you fail to see it to its logical conclusions.

It is the philosophy of elitism, because it is a philosophy that is only tenable to the privileged. Tell a woman in Africa who has suffered from genital mutilation that there is no such thing as objective good or evil. Try to convince a survivor of the holocaust that evil is just a perspective. Try to tell the thirty million slaves in the world that there is no right or wrong. I think you will have a hard time doing that.

It is the philosophy of narcissism, because it denies the validity of any interpretation but our own. Forget the author. Forget the artist. Forget what other people think. All that matters is what I think. Again, this paves the way for the morality of raw power. It is alienating and dehumanizing in nature, because it means that people can never connect with each other. It means that we are all irrevocably alone.

Finally, postmodernism leads to intellectual slavery. You think it is liberating to think that only your thoughts and your interpretations matter, but in fact this makes us nothing but sheep, and easy to manipulate. That little thing called reality returns. What you think you know you do not really know; what you think is your interpretation is really someone else's interpretation. Great literature can help you see that by challenging your worldview and assumptions; escapist literature either ignores this, or it confirms the prevailing worldviews, or it critiques them in bland and ineffectual ways.

Let me give some examples. Millions of women think that they are irredeemably ugly and unlovable. This is their interpretation of themselves, or so they think. But in fact that interpretation has been consciously created by the millions of images and subtle messages produced by cosmetic companies and entertainment industries.

How about movies, which are stories that we tell each other. Why do so many women chase “bad boys,” and get their hearts broken again and again. It is because movies like romcoms promote the idea that underneath their smug exteriors every player has a heart of gold. Players know this, and they often exploits those beliefs in women; “hey, give me a chance, I can change!” Are these good stories?

What about literature? Novels can promote the worst stereotypes, they can reinforce destructive world views, and they can legitimize prejudice. Just read this article: “Top Twenty Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight.”
http://www.bspcn.com/2009/11/25/top-...from-twilight/

Now, we both can agree that no one has the power to assign objective normative categories. It is an a objective fat that a diet junk food and a lifestyle inactivity will make most people obese. Whether or not you think this is good or not is up to you, but note that most people who decide that it is good to be obese are doing so either because of rationalizations, self-preservation, or as rebellion against the abuse and cruelty they may have endured in a society that often looks down on those with weight problems. Ultimately, they often delude themselves, only to realize their folly when it is too late. They had it their way, and now reality will have it its way.

So we come to my final point. I cannot say what kind of literature is good or not; I can only describe its effects, and then propose a choice. Escapist literature is nihilistic, for reasons that I have already discussed. Ultimately, it distracts us from confronting reality and is often a form of social procrastination. The “epiphanies” that we get from this literature are not epiphanies at all, but self-indulgence and rationalization. You can not have epiphanies without some form of objective truth. You can only confirm what you already believed. This kind of literature promotes intellectual laziness, and does nothing to help us to think critically about the world.

Now, there is nothing wrong with escapism. Thinking creatures need to escape from their thoughts from time to time or they will go insane. What I object to is the sole consumption of escapist literature, and the belief that there is no distinction between literature that engages reality and literature that tries to escape it, and that things can only be judged by the market and by how much pleasure they bring us.

Literature that I call engaging is literature that expands our worldview and forces us to question our own assumptions and beliefs. Do not misinterpret me; engagist literature and popularity are not mutually exclusive. Dickens was one of the most popular authors of all time, and he is without question a writer who tried to engage reality. In fact, most writers who have survived the test of time were enormously popular in their own time.

So there is a choice, between a philosophy that says you should live for pleasure, a philosophy that transforms you into a self-indulgent and rationalizing sheep, or a philosophy that says you should constantly strive to expand your mind, to become more than what you are, and to challenge all your own assumptions. Postmodernism claims to do the latter, but without a belief in some form of objectivity it is impossible to challenge anything.

As far as your dismissal of the founding fathers: whatever their motives, they created a governmental framework that has lasted for over two-hundred years and allows us to do things like go on chatrooms and debate without fear of some government intervention. Of course, our freedoms and liberties are a result of a process that has taken place over the last two hundred years, of people fighting to realize these freedoms for all, but this struggle has taken place within the framework that the founding fathers established. Now I know you are an anarchist, so you think that government is bad. But you idea of humanity is incredibly unrealistic. There will always be governments, because there will always be people who strive to consolidate their power, and as long as there are people who live only in their own worlds, the wolves will always be able to manipulate and control people. Don't think that if you lay down your weapon that someone else will not pick it up and use it against you. The only way an anarcho-capitalist society could emerge is through worldwide revolution. Those in power will never willingly relinquish it, and so the only way to remove them is by force. But the history of revolutions has shown that they more often than not lead to totalitarianisms and terrors.

Of course, I am always open to changing my mind. I am open to the realization that what I have argued are false assumptions, that I am merely mimicking someone else's beliefs or arguments. If you can make a compelling argument to overthrow my assumptions, an argument based on logic and not on self-contradictory statements and intellectually lazy propositions, then I would be more than willing to change my mind.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by TGS

This thread is ploughing forward as if there is an agreed definition of "knowledge" - which of course there isn't. Consequently the contributors are simply talking past each other. So, here's an attempted definition of knowledge: knowledge is justified true belief. Now, there are all sorts of contested terms in there - "justified", "true" and "belief" - but maybe tackling the meanings of those terms we can come to some agreement as to what knowledge is.

Dangit TGS, you're defining one difficult term to define with three equally difficult terms to define!

But what you say is just. I did jump the gun by defining didactic fictions as knowledge without giving a concrete definition of knowledge. I have begged the question. The purpose of this thread was to define knowledge through discussion, yet I labeled certain works "knowledge" works before knowledge was even defined. I was hasty in making this thread, and perhaps it is futile to debate the meaning of knowledge.

Perhaps a better direction of this thread would be to discuss the nature and purposes of various kinds of information, and what kinds of information should be privileged either by laws or public funds.

Now, I am uniformly against censorship of any kind. What I am suggesting is that there be a discussion over whether there are certain kinds of information that we should as a society encourage the dissemination of, versus kinds of information that we merely let be.

Specifically, I write this in response to the belief to two opposing beliefs; one is that "information wants to be free." But what does that mean? Is all information equal? Should our libraries offer pornography?

The other is that information is a form of property whose creator has a right to perpetually own. If so, should patents be perpetual? Should we even consider a balance between benefits to society, versus notions of property rights?

I didn't ask this, however, because I did not want this to be a copyright thread, for reasons that I have already stated. Plus, "What is knowledge" is a sexier title than anything else I could come up with.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

There will always be governments, because there will always be people who strive to consolidate their power, and as long as there are people who live only in their own worlds, the wolves will always be able to manipulate and control people. Don't think that if you lay down your weapon that someone else will not pick it up and use it against you. The only way an anarcho-capitalist society could emerge is through worldwide revolution. Those in power will never willingly relinquish it, and so the only way to remove them is by force. But the history of revolutions has shown that they more often than not lead to totalitarianisms and terrors.

That is the old way of thinking, through antiquity and even postmodernism. Some of us are living in the new era, just as some never accepted postmodernism, or modernism for that matter.

An anarcho-capitalist culture will emerge one realization at a time by definition. We don't want or need power, so there is no need to take power from those who currently "have" it.

I have been thinking lately that Mickey Mouse might make a good candidate for a perpetual copyright. Making copyright decisions on a case by case basis might not be trivial, but it might be useful. Of course there are those who think that all copyright's should be perpetual.

A speculative scenario I find frightening, Imagine that a good portion of the culture's books were produced by 5 or 6 companies. Now imagine that some psychotic ceo decides to merge all these companies and then proceeds to stop printing books. What of your copyright then??

[Penforhire]

ZAMM is not much about zen philosophy as the title implies. It is mostly about how we categorize things and "what is quality?" with an good story framing it (with a sweet twist). Yes, I highly recommend it.

It perhaps hits me harder than others because I have a background with some of the peripheral story. My father rode an old BMW motorcycle and repaired his own machines. I was never very mechanical but I restored his old motorcycle with my own hands after he passed away. It was cathartic, confidence-building, and educational.

[spellbanisher]

Thanks pen, for the feedback.

As far as the new era that Giggleton keeps talking about, I think this writer gives a good overview; he calls the current era that we are living in pseudomodernism.

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue58...ism_And_Beyond

Here are some excerpts:

"Postmodernism, like modernism and romanticism before it, fetishised [ie placed supreme importance on] the author, even when the author chose to indict or pretended to abolish him or herself. But the culture we have now fetishises the recipient of the text to the degree that they become a partial or whole author of it. Optimists may see this as the democratisation of culture; pessimists will point to the excruciating banality and vacuity of the cultural products thereby generated (at least so far).

Let me explain. Postmodernism conceived of contemporary culture as a spectacle before which the individual sat powerless, and within which questions of the real were problematised. It therefore emphasised the television or the cinema screen. Its successor, which I will call pseudo-modernism, makes the individual’s action the necessary condition of the cultural product. Pseudo-modernism includes all television or radio programmes or parts of programmes, all ‘texts’, whose content and dynamics are invented or directed by the participating viewer or listener (although these latter terms, with their passivity and emphasis on reception, are obsolete: whatever a telephoning Big Brother voter or a telephoning 6-0-6 football fan are doing, they are not simply viewing or listening).

By definition, pseudo-modern cultural products cannot and do not exist unless the individual intervenes physically in them. Great Expectations will exist materially whether anyone reads it or not. Once Dickens had finished writing it and the publisher released it into the world, its ‘material textuality’ – its selection of words – was made and finished, even though its meanings, how people interpret it, would remain largely up for grabs. Its material production and its constitution were decided by its suppliers, that is, its author, publisher, serialiser etc alone – only the meaning was the domain of the reader. Big Brother on the other hand, to take a typical pseudo-modern cultural text, would not exist materially if nobody phoned up to vote its contestants off. Voting is thus part of the material textuality of the programme – the telephoning viewers write the programme themselves. If it were not possible for viewers to write sections of Big Brother, it would then uncannily resemble an Andy Warhol film: neurotic, youthful exhibitionists inertly bitching and talking aimlessly in rooms for hour after hour. This is to say, what makes Big Brother what it is, is the viewer’s act of phoning in."

"The pseudo-modern cultural phenomenon par excellence is the internet. Its central act is that of the individual clicking on his/her mouse to move through pages in a way which cannot be duplicated, inventing a pathway through cultural products which has never existed before and never will again. This is a far more intense engagement with the cultural process than anything literature can offer, and gives the undeniable sense (or illusion) of the individual controlling, managing, running, making up his/her involvement with the cultural product. Internet pages are not ‘authored’ in the sense that anyone knows who wrote them, or cares. The majority either require the individual to make them work, like Streetmap or Route Planner, or permit him/her to add to them, like Wikipedia, or through feedback on, for instance, media websites. In all cases, it is intrinsic to the internet that you can easily make up pages yourself (eg blogs).

Similarly, television in the pseudo-modern age favours not only reality TV (yet another unapt term), but also shopping channels, and quizzes in which the viewer calls to guess the answer to riddles in the hope of winning money. It also favours phenomena like Ceefax and Teletext. But rather than bemoan the new situation, it is more useful to find ways of making these new conditions conduits for cultural achievements instead of the vacuity currently evident. It is important here to see that whereas the form may change (Big Brother may wither on the vine), the terms by which individuals relate to their television screen and consequently what broadcasters show have incontrovertibly changed. The purely ‘spectacular’ function of television, as with all the arts, has become a marginal one: what is central now is the busy, active, forging work of the individual who would once have been called its recipient. In all of this, the ‘viewer’ feels powerful and is indeed necessary; the ‘author’ as traditionally understood is either relegated to the status of the one who sets the parameters within which others operate, or becomes simply irrelevant, unknown, sidelined; and the ‘text’ is characterised both by its hyper-ephemerality and by its instability. It is made up by the ‘viewer’, if not in its content then in its sequence – you wouldn’t read Middlemarch by going from page 118 to 316 to 401 to 501, but you might well, and justifiably, read Ceefax that way."

"A pseudo-modern text lasts an exceptionally brief time. Unlike, say, Fawlty Towers, reality TV programmes cannot be repeated in their original form, since the phone-ins cannot be reproduced, and without the possibility of phoning-in they become a different and far less attractive entity. Ceefax text dies after a few hours. If scholars give the date they referenced an internet page, it is because the pages disappear or get radically re-cast so quickly. Text messages and emails are extremely difficult to keep in their original form; printing out emails does convert them into something more stable, like a letter, but only by destroying their essential, electronic state. Radio phone-ins, computer games – their shelf-life is short, they are very soon obsolete. A culture based on these things can have no memory – certainly not the burdensome sense of a preceding cultural inheritance which informed modernism and postmodernism. Non-reproducible and evanescent, pseudo-modernism is thus also amnesiac: these are cultural actions in the present moment with no sense of either past or future.

The cultural products of pseudo-modernism are also exceptionally banal, as I’ve hinted. The content of pseudo-modern films tends to be solely the acts which beget and which end life. This puerile primitivism of the script stands in stark contrast to the sophistication of contemporary cinema’s technical effects. Much text messaging and emailing is vapid in comparison with what people of all educational levels used to put into letters. A triteness, a shallowness dominates all. The pseudo-modern era, at least so far, is a cultural desert. Although we may grow so used to the new terms that we can adapt them for meaningful artistic expression (and then the pejorative label I have given pseudo-modernism may no longer be appropriate), for now we are confronted by a storm of human activity producing almost nothing of any lasting or even reproducible cultural value – anything which human beings might look at again and appreciate in fifty or two hundred years time."

"Whereas postmodernism called ‘reality’ into question, pseudo-modernism defines the real implicitly as myself, now, ‘interacting’ with its texts. Thus, pseudo-modernism suggests that whatever it does or makes is what is reality, and a pseudo-modern text may flourish the apparently real in an uncomplicated form: the docu-soap with its hand-held cameras (which, by displaying individuals aware of being regarded, give the viewer the illusion of participation); The Office and The Blair Witch Project, interactive pornography and reality TV; the essayistic cinema of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock.

Secondly, whereas postmodernism favoured the ironic, the knowing and the playful, with their allusions to knowledge, history and ambivalence, pseudo-modernism’s typical intellectual states are ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety: Bush, Blair, Bin Laden, Le Pen and their like on one side, and the more numerous but less powerful masses on the other. Pseudo-modernism belongs to a world pervaded by the encounter between a religiously fanatical segment of the United States, a largely secular but definitionally hyper-religious Israel, and a fanatical sub-section of Muslims scattered across the planet: pseudo-modernism was not born on 11 September 2001, but postmodernism was interred in its rubble. In this context pseudo-modernism lashes fantastically sophisticated technology to the pursuit of medieval barbarism – as in the uploading of videos of beheadings onto the internet, or the use of mobile phones to film torture in prisons. Beyond this, the destiny of everyone else is to suffer the anxiety of getting hit in the cross-fire. But this fatalistic anxiety extends far beyond geopolitics, into every aspect of contemporary life; from a general fear of social breakdown and identity loss, to a deep unease about diet and health; from anguish about the destructiveness of climate change, to the effects of a new personal ineptitude and helplessness, which yield TV programmes about how to clean your house, bring up your children or remain solvent. This technologised cluelessness is utterly contemporary: the pseudo-modernist communicates constantly with the other side of the planet, yet needs to be told to eat vegetables to be healthy, a fact self-evident in the Bronze Age. He or she can direct the course of national television programmes, but does not know how to make him or herself something to eat – a characteristic fusion of the childish and the advanced, the powerful and the helpless. For varying reasons, these are people incapable of the “disbelief of Grand Narratives” which Lyotard argued typified postmodernists."

"This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism. You click, you punch the keys, you are ‘involved’, engulfed, deciding. You are the text, there is no-one else, no ‘author’; there is nowhere else, no other time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is superseded."

[Giggleton]

I definitely do not agree with the idea that the new era will be banal. Taken individually, twitter messages and emails might seem vapid. But they are nevertheless representative of the culture. Taken as a whole, and understanding how they are linked, our twitters and emails will be a more accurate representation of history than anything ever written. We might need to develop strong AI before we can really reflect upon what has occurred and collate all the data, but that is beside the point.

My wife made the collage that I'm attaching.

[Penforhire]

Banal might be the wrong word but I'm not expecting a cutural golden age. I know many people predicted the decline of civilization since, well, forever. I'm recalling Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" from the late 80's.

Now I'm going to ramble, lol.

The internet and TV drive the masses toward homogenizing and lowest-common-denominator. Sure, there are bastions of intellectualism, say MobileRead for example. But we do not dominate society. American Idol, Survivor, and assorted other pseudo-reality TV shows dominate. Sites like YouTube, Netflix, Google, and Twitter dominate the internet. So I suppose I am agreeing with Spellbanisher's excerpt in that I see that sort of content as infantile and passive.

It represents a loss of culture, IMO.

There are a couple of advantages and maybe they will be enough to outweigh the loss of traditions. Aside from photo/video content nobody knows your race, sex, age, religion or other biasing characteristics on the internet. Maybe your language will give it away but you're just as likely to fake out your readers (e.g. cops who pretend to be 13 year olds trolling for pedophiles). Another advantage is ease of access. In a revolution similar to Gutenberg's printing press, anyone with an internet connection has access to more free information than they could possibly absorb in a lifetime. Education should become less elitist, despite the currently-higher-price of on-line education such as University of Phoenix or Capella. Another advantage is telepresence, the ability to interact with people around the globe with only time zones (sleep) as a barrier.

Those are significant advantages. Will it be enough to avoid a banal near future? Dunno. Maybe. I am mourning the loss of traditional written epics, something I studied in college. It takes a cultural basis to put an epic into context. The closest I sense we come to that these days is in the cyberpunk genre, such as William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, or Charlie Stross. They write about post-cultural worlds that may come to pass.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

The internet and TV drive the masses toward homogenizing and lowest-common-denominator. Sure, there are bastions of intellectualism, say MobileRead for example. But we do not dominate society. American Idol, Survivor, and assorted other pseudo-reality TV shows dominate. Sites like YouTube, Netflix, Google, and Twitter dominate the internet.

I am mourning the loss of traditional written epics, something I studied in college. It takes a cultural basis to put an epic into context. The closest I sense we come to that these days is in the cyberpunk genre, such as William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, or Charlie Stross. They write about post-cultural worlds that may come to pass.

The idea of domination has come to pass, it is no longer relevant. All things are a part of the culture. Without any of them we would have nothing.

You might be happy to know that I am currently working on an epic poem, not sure when it will be ready, but you never can tell with these types of things.

[Penforhire]

It may not be relevant to you or I but I suspect many religious people would disagree, at least those whose beliefs include proselytizing. Same for racists, nationalists, and other similar subdivisions of people. As negative as some of those connotations are, those divisions represent cultures that endured, at least up until now. Secular humanism is attractive on the outside but not a satisfying meal for me.

Good luck on that epic poem. The world does need new epics.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

It may not be relevant to you or I but I suspect many religious people would disagree, at least those whose beliefs include proselytizing. Same for racists, nationalists, and other similar subdivisions of people. As negative as some of those connotations are, those divisions represent cultures that endured, at least up until now. Secular humanism is attractive on the outside but not a satisfying meal for me.

I don't like angry people either, but it takes all kinds as the saying goes. There is no division here.