Original comic source: https://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ours... (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20100111052839/http://www.recomb...)
HN discussion from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733
Wikipedia entry for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Bit of an aside, it was fun to notice the Australian references in the comic. Surprises me still to see something Australian on the "regular" internet.
> the Australian references
People make too much of what Orwell supposedly feared may happen some day. He was writing about stuff the Soviet and British governments were doing in his time, and in particular, imagined what Soviet rule over Britain may look like. Assigning this philosophy to him and criticizing him for it seems unfair.
Also… maybe he achieved his purpose? Most people have read his books, and it helped generate a widespread aversion to authoritarianism… actually preventing it from happening in the USA and Britain. Many countries nowadays do have societies and governments that look a lot like 1984.
No, most people pretended to read Animal Farm and 1984 in middle school and haven’t thought about them since. They didn’t understand them at the time, and they don’t see the similar manipulations going on in today’s society.
I think you are right. I wish people paid attention to Blade Runner, Alien, etc. and realized what an equal or greater danger unchecked corporations are.
A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements … they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship.
A game of chess does not add a single new fact to the mind; it does not excite a single beautiful thought; nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and improving the nobler faculties.
Scientific American, July, 1858
[0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-conce...
Another more historic example in the same mold:
>>If men learn [to read], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.<<
Plato, 400-300 BC
Basically, learning to read and write would lead to an overreliance and provide only a "semblance of wisdom", rather than "true wisdom".
I don't know that much about literacy rates and social competition in ancient Greece, but I suspect it may have been in Plato's personal interests that others remain illiterate.
He wasn’t wrong; we did lose the skill for memorising large oral works. He just missed the upside.
haha the man probably would have been absolutely devastated to learn that his posterity has degenerated to the point of using Google while coding... or god forbid, interviewing.
Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a game, not more but also not less.
But playing Chess at any serious level (more than a couple hours a week) has some non Chess side effects; it teaches you to examine your own behaviour, it teaches you that even if you're very good you can still lose (and hopefully how to lose well), and it teaches you that the other side gets a vote (get a turn, no action happens in a vacuum).
All of which are very valuable life lessons.
You'll get that from any sport and also physical benefits
You learn all of these lessons by practicing most other practices/crafts.
Life is a game no more no less.
If you can be a champion at anything you deserve recognition - just look at the people lauded for chugging dozens of hot dogs
To be fair, I do not understand how someone can gobble up food so quickly and not throw up. It really is amazing in a sense.
"Life is a game no more no less."
Exactly.
So take a game AI from Deep Mind, link it to some AI that can build a world model, categorize images, put it in a robot, maybe an LLM so it can talk to you, give it some goals. See what happens.
Yeah, if you spend your life solving crossword puzzles, you end up intellectually poor by most standards.
Note that this might also hold to some degree for computer programming.
If this man knew TikTok, he'd have a stroke.
Is this meant to be an analog to Postman’s argument? Because it isn’t. His argument doesn’t really have a moral bent to it. It’s a very practical argument that different mediums are capable of carrying different messages.
I read it as a counter to Postman’s citing Huxley that society is becoming enamored with the superficial (ie the ignoble) pursuits. I read the OP as effectively saying “who is to say what is noble vs trivial, considering it varies in societal context.”
170 years ago, people may have thought chess was superficial. I think now, maybe it would be considered a more noble pursuit.
Or, maybe the OP was saying it’s a constant devolving towards the increasingly trivial.
Chess is a superficial pursuit, especially today, because it became a meme due to a Netflix television show.
Not that I care. People can pursue whatever they want superficially. And I have plenty of my own superficial pursuits.
Lenin eventually took the same view - that chess was distracting him from a higher purpose. Perhaps a harmless game would have been a better use of his time.
I much prefer people amuse themselves to death than they think and theorize themselves- (or others, in the case of many late 19th and early 20th century intellectuals) to death.
At what point did this become a valid and legitimate issue?
Why do we feel the need to prefer or not prefer what others do with their time? Isn’t that something that concerns only the person and their own life, which really shouldn’t concern us at all?
I think your point really highlights this ethical mindset that has become so prominent today, especially with the rise of the internet.
> Lenin eventually took the same view - that chess was distracting him from a higher purpose
The world would have been a better place had he kept playing chess then.
I kind of agree. Chess sucks big time, especially played online. Playing with your grandpa in the park is OK.
There was some chess prodigy who, in his teens, was already winning against most champions, and who in his early twenties abandoned chess altogether, citing it a "waste of life".
Morphy, one of the greatest players of all time, is famous for this.
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
Live Neil Postman. Discovered him around 2016 and read many of his books. And planning to regularly reread him.
So many things changed since he died but his ideas hold up pretty good.
He passed away before the first iPhone and now my only 2 wishes are: 1) a new book about how smartphones revolutionize the modern world and 2) a new Lauryn hill album
Technopoly is also amazing, make that your next read.
yes, I’ve read that and many of his books. they all a bit similar and he reuses tons of similar quotes and ideas. but that is even better, he just tries to drive the same points.
Given that the vast majority of people go to work to earn money for businesses that exist either to exploit natural resources or appreciate in value in the eyes of an economic system that prioritizes increasing capital valuations above all else, including human dignity, long-term survival and the life of other species, I would say we're already there.
Talking about a dystopian future is a convenient way to assuade our sense of dissonance that the present is most certainly not that.
Case in point, nobody wants to rid the Earth of insects, fill the oceans with plastic or plough microplastics into every orifice, but we are all complicit and can't seem to gather ourselves to fix it.
> First of all, I know it's all people like you. And that's what's so scary. Individually you don't know what you're doing collectively. - The Circle by Dave Eggers
> In the course of her job, Resaint had met people like Megrimson, executives who went into work and sat down at their desks and made decisions that ravaged the world. They didn't seem evil to her. They seemed more like fungal colonies or AI subroutines, mechanical components of a self-perpetuating super-organism, with no real subjectivity of their own. That said, she would have happily watched any of them die. - Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
I know it's still science/climate fiction, but very relevant to your point.
Do you really think the world has no insects, that the ocean is full of plastics and that there are micro-plastics everywhere?
Have you personally checked any of these claims? Or are you depending upon (possibly fraudulent) science claims?
Additionally, if you want to fix something, go ahead and do it. But don't start petitioning this out that authority to do it - they won't, you won't like the result, but you are sanctioning use of force against others.
> Given that the vast majority of people go to work to earn money for businesses that exist either to exploit natural resources ...
Or for governments, doing government jobs that produce absolutely nothing of value and force people to waste a big chunk of their lives on administrative tasks...
Or for corporations that produce things of negative value and force people to waste a big chunk of their lives on administrative tasks.
"a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case" — Nathan Heller
Whats the public vs private split to this idea? Its not a new idea -
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” — John Wanamaker
He doesn’t speak to any particular split. The government forces the private sector to do pointless work as much or more.
I come from a town where the biggest employer is the state in a few different forms. I think it's entirely valid for the government to keep them all busy 9-5, salaried and pensioned. Main function of the state IMO.
I don't fear government, I fear the lack of it.
I just listened to this a few weeks ago. It’s incredible and really helps frame how we got here and is still very relevant to social media even though it’s written about TV/Hollywood. You’ll be hard pressed to find deeper media analysis that remains very approachable.
A couple of years ago i was working for a design studio which produced an image movie for a big cooperation which somehow painted an utopian future for their upcoming product ideas. In that movie there was a woman reading in "Brave new World".[EDITED] It was clear none of the people involved read the book. My remarks were swept aside by claiming hardly anyone has read the book anyway... headlessness might be a real issue.
That’s hilariously ironic
Do you mean "Brave New World"?
Given the current pro-war propaganda all over the place combined with the creeping cost of living, I think Nineteen Eighty-Four is becoming more prescient than Brave New World.
The topic of "creeping cost of living" reminded me of two other good dystopian novels:
Doing things merely to stimulate pleasurable brain chemistry is fine unless all you do is play games or watch formulaic media that have no lasting effect or achievement.
Formulaic or novel media doesn’t make a huge difference, it’s just passive consumption either way.
Coincidentally I’ve been listening to Divers a bunch recently (which is a really great album, although I am just passively consuming just like everything else… I don’t know if it falls under formulaic for you, but it is a good formula if so). A lot of it is about death and time, and she ends one of the songs with a sort of gentle sing-songy “Look, and despair.” I always read the “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” in Ozymandias as a giant “fuck your hopes and achievements” from that ancient king.
Anyway, Joanna Newsom’s delivery is a lot more gentle, so maybe the fact that all of our effects and achievements will ground to dust is not so bad. Mattering would be very stressful.
whats wrong with headshots on the PC while doomscrolling on the phone in the age of monsters and idiots?
If you, like me, would have had to watch people play Candy Crush on the Tube [= the London subway] on the way to work every morning for seven years, you would not ask.
I felt terribly sorry for that loss of GDP and decline in mean global IQ.
Why would playing Candy Crush on the subway have any impact on GDP or IQ? Sounds like a non sequitur.
The plebians should be doing business during their commute, never stop hustling! /s
Content from Amusing Ourselves to Death presented as a visual comic to facilitate/"enhance" its communication is deeply ironic. Can't wait for the TikTok video.
The sad thing is that none of it is very amusing. Current events twitter is more aggravating than amusing. We're aggravating ourselves to death.
The point is that it's both distraction. Social media has told us that enragement sucks up even more attention than amusement. Mission accomplished.
"aggravating than amusing."
But it is distracting. Huxley didn't necessarily say everything was fun, just that it is distracting.
Rage, anger, outrage, keeps people engaged more than amusing.
Yeah, and then you do something fun to distract you from said current events.
> Current events twitter is more aggravating than amusing.
Because the situation is grave?
I think that many things in the world recently are seriously fucked up and the mainstream media are completely manipulated (an example would the FCC fasttracking the acquisition by Soros of 200 radio stations in the US right before the elections).
X/Twitter is showing things as they are: be it SpaceX launches or things actually happening in the world.
If I read a post on X / Twitter about the US being now $35 trillion in debt, is it the fault of Twitter that the world's first economy is so much in debt that very serious shit may happen at some point?
Don't shoot the last non-censored messenger and don't put your head in the sand.
I briefly spent some time on Twitter a few months ago, and it was almost entirely widespread hysteria over things that were easily verifiable as trivially false. For example, at the time people were enraged about a supposed trans woman winning a boxing match in the olympics- but she was not in fact a trans woman.
My take is that X/Twitter is mostly sharing fake rage bait, to emotionally manipulate people into supporting various hate based political movements.
> X/Twitter is showing things as they are
Wow. No, X/Twitter is showing things people (and quite a few bots) say. There’s no mechanism there to emphasize things that are. In fact you’re rewarded for saying things that aren’t, if they generate engagement, which is so much easier if you just make stuff up.
While the situation may be grave it was usually much worse for the vast majority of the population.
People are aggravated and enraged by famine deaths precisely because they affect much smaller percentage of people than they used to, where death from hunger was common.
The debt and likely coming financial repression is a weaker form of coin debasement practiced regularly by many kings. And so on...
People always reference 1984 but Orwell’s essay “Pleasure Spots” is probably more relevant to this subject: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
I think there was a quote by a Nordic writer (possibly Hans Christian Andersen) in which he talked about how circuses and amusement parks keep people distracted and busy so we don't focus on important policy issues.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220818-the-surprisingl...
La Boétie?
Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects … that the stupified peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures, … learned subservience as naively, bit not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.That references the Latin phrase:
panem et circenses
It refers to a concept prevalent in ancient Rome, where the government would provide its citizens with free food and entertainment in the form of lavish spectacles, such as gladiator fights, chariot races, and theatrical performances. The phrase highlights the strategy employed by the ruling class to keep the population content and distracted from important political issues and matters of governance.
The article just lifts the content from the book and doesn’t add anything original. Great. We’ve heard.
I would say 1984 is rather more subtle than portrayed here.
For instance, the masses are kept at bay by scaring them with perpetual wars on the one hand and by keeping them distracted with machine-generation filthy "literature" (we only reached the level of technical sophistication to do that courtesy GPT/Llama last year). That part is more similar to what the post portrays as the "Huxley" view, perhaps.
The appendix of 1984 ("Newspeak") is a masterpiece on its own, redefining English words like "freedom" so that they can only mean "free from lice", with the notion of freedom forgotten.
Exactly, and the comments here are not about the point in the article, just like the article points out people missing the point of Huxley.
Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly the same way as before
…wake upReminds me of my favorite copypasta:
>If you're reading this, you've been in a coma for almost 20 years because of a car accident. We're trying a new technique. We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope we're getting through. Please wake up.
Even if people wake up and "do something", govts will just tire us out. Similar to how online protests against reddit, (or on ground protests like occupy [X], and so on) and others failed. We have no option but to accept what is handed out to us.
Wake up and... do what exactly? Tell others to "wake up" ad nauseum? The whole "wake up, sheeple, you're being manipulated" is both correct and amusingly self-terminating.
Metacognition, for all its benefits, comes with the newfound sisyphean task of being unable to intentionally avoid thinking about a white elephant for an entire minute. "Don't be influenced by the ads/media/propaganda" works about as well.
So perhaps the best way to reduce manipulation is to find a way back to sleep sometimes. A sort of meta-meta-cognition, if you will. It's self-awareness all the way down.
Dopamine is one hell of a drug.
Outrage and fear are exhausting, let me tell ya. Somehow I cannot get away from nursing my PTSD online, with sick pleasure in picking fights and "winning" arguments.
Sometimes I wake up with a thread racing through my mind and the perfect retort to my "adversary"
I honestly don't hate you guys, but you give my life purpose and meaning... So thank you
The book's title is a nod to the Roger Waters album/song that deals with the same theme.
The book predates the song and album by about 7 years, so the album name references the book. Postman even mentioned the fact in his 1995 book "The end of education"
> "Postman even mentioned the fact in his 1995 book "The end of education""
Quote from Postman according to wikipedia[0]:
"the level of sensibility required to appreciate the music of Roger Waters is both different and lower than what is required to appreciate, let us say, a Chopin étude."
Ouch.
I actually got the album when it came out, and was roughly aware of the concept and the book from reviews in the music press. Had I known that it was comparing Orwell and Huxley I'd have definitely made the effort to read more. But this was before the internet so it wasn't easy (you had to do things like going to a public library), so technological progress is not all downside.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Thank you. I was mislead by the date on the post and did not know the book was older. TIL.
I think it’s the other way around — the book is from ~ 1985 while the Roger Waters albums is ~ 1992.
Thank you, my bad, you are right, as the other sibling comment.
Legendary comment from the old boy Terry Davis as the top post there.
Gods true OS
RIP
The only true seer of the modern age.
Brave New World supposes a world of plenty controlled by a few ruling oligarchs and aristocrats; 1984 supposes a world of scarcity also controlled by a few ruling oligarchs and aristocrats. One society is controlled by the carrot, and in the other society, given the shortage of carrots, the stick is brought out to maintain the social order.
The book came out in 2005.
Was there any follow up, I didn't see one on the wiki.
It seems like we are accelerating to this.
Even the changes between 2005 and 2024. Near 20 years, we've leaned into the Huxley vision. Really leaned into it.
This is all getting really scary. I feel like we should do something. We should really band together and change course. I volunteer to go out and do something, except of course, I'm a bit distracted at the moment, so maybe can we put off the change for another week? I really need to see the end of this season of "Industry". Then we can do something, I'm sure I'll have some free time next week to get right on this.
Huxley’s fears presented in this particular way are immediately debunked by actual book sales and education statistics.
Independent bookstores have been consistently growing since 2009: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpol...
The book industry is expanding with particularly strong growth in e-books and audiobooks: https://worldmetrics.org/book-industry-statistics/
Educational attainment is generally increasing as time goes on in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
Voter turnout has increased over time in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
If anything I think that the general population is becoming more aware and educated.
A more diversified leisure industry with more options than the days of having three channels on television is not the same as drowning in amusement, or the average person spending more time on amusement than on “serious” and “thoughtful” activities. Instead, it means that the individual has more options for forms of amusement they enjoy.
I think you can argue that 'books' were deemed as intellectual in Huxley/Orwell's time, so banning them would be a sign of society decline ---> BUT, todays books can be seen as just part of the entertainment distraction. Books sales are up, but how many of them are YA, Manga , Pop-Fiction. They are as shallow and distracting as a TV Show.
I tend to think even reading the worst trash book is still better than Video. But it is still playing into distraction.
Note: I Like Manga, but those series that are 100 volumes long, that is distracting.
(2014)
It's amazing that solving death and aging is not Goal #1 of every rich and poor person on the planet. Death is coming for you and you're trying to get rich? Engaging in politics? Fighting? What's that gonna do when you're falling apart in real time?
We're all dying fast. Medical industry can't stop it either, they don't know how. Nobody does.
Yet nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
Some[1] do invest, others don’t. Personally, I see myself on the poor side, rather than the rich side and what I care about is having a good life however short it is. Family, friends and adventure. I don’t believe in the afterlife in any form and I wish I could live forever with my loved ones but I’ve also accepted it’s natural to die. Maybe one day we will overcome death and we will live until the heat death of the universe. Meh.
Even if you could solve aging, you could never solve death. Probability and entropy will catch up with you eventually.
I think that most people over a certain age are quite aware of their own mortality, and are looking to bring meaning to the time that they have.
> eventually
I'll take millions of years instead of 75 thanks
That’s what bugs me about gen ai. How is it that all these resources are being used on recreating things that humans already do and not entirely focused on aging, health, and the climate?
We already have artists, we don’t have a cure for what we’ve done to the climate. It’s frustrating.
It is interesting that these two books essentially show the most extreme end result of the two major economic systems. Socialist authoritarian communist states gravitate towards 1984, capitalist liberal democracies turn into Brave New World.
Well said. I think the issue stems from the same point.
Both cases assume that individuals are being coerced out of their potential to transform the world for the better, whether by Big Brother or by TikTok. In my view, both stem from an assumption that I don’t see playing out in the real world: that all individuals have the desire or capacity to make a difference and be something "more".
I think this idea came from the Enlightenment. That’s when we started to forget that, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority are just here to occupy space.
Exactly! Both Orwell and Huxley are right but in different contexts. Also note that both of their works are an exaggerated caricature of aspects of Society which they wished to highlight and show its insidiousness. Thus one has to look beyond the "painted picture" and understand what was being meant.
However; Orwell had a better insight on the overall issues which can be found in his essays eg. "Notes on Nationalism", "All Art is Propaganda", "Politics and the English Language" (eg. Newspeak) etc.
Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.
They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
It's not what stupid people do in their free time - it's what capable and smart people value and pursue that makes all the difference.
Nietzsche laid this out quite beautifully in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Huxley and Orwell are kindergarten philosophy by comparison.
>it's what capable and smart people value and pursue that makes all the difference.
How do you know capable and smart people will keep having good values? Seems to me that it's true until it isn't - populism takes over politics, ideology takes over the humanities, science gets Goodharted to death, etc. Values are highly circular - we value what high-status people in our (sub)culture value, and you become high-status by getting what people value. This holds for smart people as well.
> How do you know capable and smart people will keep having good values?
'Good' values don't exist, so we need not worry about that one :)
Then what do you mean when you say "make a difference"?
I think they mean the literal opposite of things staying the same, not the "helping people" idiom.
Fair enough, but for the sake of this conversation, if we say 'good' values are those that keep things from staying the same, aren't the values of smart people just as likely to evolve towards 'bad' ones? For example, I'm sure most people know at least one smart person who only plays video games; it does seem that we'll keep inventing forms of entertainment that wirehead people more and more effectively, which seems in line with the Brave New World scenario.
are you saying smart people are immune to the temptations of attention-dopamine?
because i'd consider myself above average in terms of intelligence and ambition but i still fall into the procrastination trap often. now you might say that this makes me in fact "stupid" per your defininition (or maybe arrogant as i overestimate myself) but i see this in other people as well.
i also would not say that being "productive" as in moving humanity ahead must be the KPI by which everyone is measured. you only have one life, you can spend it how you want, even if that is watching tiktoks 24/7.
This sentiment, that each is entitled to a life of choosing, resonates strongly with the spirit of individualism. Within it there is a disregard for obligation or belonging that, I think, is connected to the desire for mindless occupation and distraction.
I suspect that, the more one is cut off from a sense of collective purpose, the more one finds solace in activities that reinforce a sense of "alright" in place of true wellness.
Btw, I'm also a big procrastinator and I consider it a gift. Many wonderful things in my life have been helped by it. In this sense, I agree that there is something about an inner drive that should be listened and reacted to, but I am not sure that all activities are of equal value.
> Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.
Are you talking about this comic (i.e. a few sentences from the book) or the whole book?
I read the book a few years back and it's entirely focused on culture as a whole and less about the individual choices. He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.
He's also honest that there's probably far more junk (in absolute terms) in printing than in television: "Television is not old enough to have matched printing's output of junk." It's not about the amount of "junk" – it's about something more fundamental about the medium.
I found the book quite interesting and would highly recommend reading it!
> They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
That's an extremely pessimistic view of the world: Categorizing a set of human beings as "stupid" and saying that it doesn't matter how society is structured?
And "smart people" are also influenced by how our society is structured, no?
>He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.
Or as Postman himself put it, "the medium is the metaphor". And he strongly disliked the metaphor TV was bringing to bear on the Western World.
And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.
> And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.
This is a good point as well! When reading it I was reflecting on how internet compares to 1980s television. Yes, it has much more dopamine-fueled content, but it's way less of a monoculture. It gives a lot of opportunity for people to seek out what they're interested in and there's hundreds (thousands?) of communities with very different set of thoughts.
You also can't create actively yourself! TV was definitely a consumer only culture, with all creation heavily gatekept by an entire industry. Compare this to the print culture prior to that.
The Internet definitely has changed this, and now we are back into a creation capable metaphor.
plenty of smart people wasting their lives scrolling through bullshit. you don't use your brain to solve problems if you're never bored and allowing your mind to wander.
Think more about Attention. Not about Information.
Information is exploding and global available Attention doesn't grow. People who pay attention to one thing, can't use the same time to pay attention to something else.
So govts and corps fight over this common pool of Attention using the Media (TV/Movies/Radio/Social/News/Sports/Gaming etc etc), just like they fought over land and oil and other natural resources. Media is literally used like front line troops of colonial empires in Attention capture wars.
But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that vision. Until then people working in Attention Capture fields will keep amusing us to death.
But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose.
The problem is that "people working in Attention Capture fields" are the exact people who are winning, at least by the most common scoring mechanism of 'wealth'.
They're enriching their bank accounts just as they're impoverishing their spirits. On their deathbeds, no one ever says "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office." The same could be said for any other wealth-motivated exercise.
If I have learned one thing in life it is this: money is, at best, a necessary evil. A means to an end. Pursuing it as an end in itself is an indication that we have strayed from the path and forgotten what we were doing.
I swear I am going to, on my deathbed, say "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office," just to stop this quote going around. In the last five years I've had a few conversations about regret with elderly relatives who have now passed away. None of them regretted going to work. My grandparents met at work. One regretted that she'd been a draftswoman rather than an engineer, but that's almost the exact opposite. I don't understand why people think doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret. It has literally never been a deathbed regret for anyone whose deathbed I have attended.
> I don't understand why people think doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret.
Because there is nothing in the definition you give that remotely looks like the median job. Societies are not structured to maximize the number of jobs that fits this definition. If social structure happens to fit your Ikigai, congratulation you won the cosmic loto, enjoy.
But maybe it’s not a relevant point to show surprise on this point. Consider how much people in the rest of humanity will have to go through major existential stressful abhorrent challenges, geopolitical struggles, being effectively reduced to dull task slaves by whoever happen to be their lord of the day. How then to be surprised that at the end of their life they can think "work moments were so shitty, I wish I had spend more enjoyable ones like those I experienced while taking time with people I deeply sincerely love".
By the way, if you haven’t yet do that today, tell at least to at least three people around you how much you love them and care that they enjoy moment passed together. I promise you won’t regret it on your death bed. ;)
I'm talking about a wide range of jobs -- draftswoman, ship's engineer and structural engineer, typist, teacher -- held by people who grew up during the major existential struggles that were the great depression and the second world war. Working as a typist in the 1940s and 1950s was not some kind of utopian magical job full of meaning, but my grandmother could still hit a higher WPM than I can and she was proud of what she'd done. Earning an income was a means of doing things that she would never have been able to do otherwise. She felt lucky to be able to do things like take a ship to Europe without a chaperone and using money she'd earned, given that her mother's generation of women would have found it much harder.
My experience has been that older people often have a different outlook on life than what people my age, including me, would predict. Part of that is experience, part is coming from a different time where the baseline for quality of life was lower, and I suspect part of it is rose-tinted glasses.
They should have said: "gee, I wish I spent more time influencing people into buying things they do not need".
On their deathbeds, no one ever says "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office."
I bet a lot of people have died regretting they didn't earn more.
Money has made it far easier to barter work into what people need to survive, obtain stability & enjoy life, than its absence.
It’s easy to be jaded by those that obviously value it more than others’ well being.
But the mismatch of priorities is what is wrong, that doesn’t negate money’s positive practical value & impact.
Most people have a more multifaceted relationship with money than as a dehumanizing god or drug.
Sure, but they’re also outbidding me for a house.
Are you trying to get in a "good school district" ? Is that really that strongly correlated to kids outcome in life .
kids grow up and fight for a house in good school district :).
I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl justify all sorts of things (like wars and bidding for houses) and say that they are doing those things for sake of their kids.
>…having kids is the root of all evil.
Quite a take there. Kids are also the source of all joy and happiness, depending on how you look at it.
Yea I agree. I have kids too :)
But they are also the source of global warming, wars. On a personal level they a source of anxiety, continuous striving, jealousy and fear.
> I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl justify all sorts of things and say that they are doing those things for sake of their kids.
If that's true, then your/our existence is rooted in evil. Accordingly, if your parents were good people, they would have spared you of your existence, but apparently their very nature pushed them to bring more evil to the world.
yes exactly!
Yeah but there's negative attention, too.
Negative attention will eventually have consequences. Either they grow deaf, run away, become enraged, etc.
I think of the millions of ads, singers, bullies, salesmen who've vied for my attention, and you wear down. You get sick of saying "no", pretending not to notice, brushing aside dialogs, feeling bad because you can't help.
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Laurie-Anderson/Language-I...
I don't know, it's possible for a person to pay no attention to anything. Therefore it isn't always maxed out. Also the "quality" of attention can vary. I think the time spent looking at things has increased, but the level of focus and "deep attention" paid to things has likely fallen over time.
> But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that vision.
One of the best things I've done for myself is to stop reading the news. You will not believe how this ignorance has led me to a calmer life, to the gasp and concern of my peers, wondering how am I able to cope, to exist, without knowing what happens "in the world?"
As you say, anyone has 1 unit of attention, and unlike many other things, it is fully in our control. The biggest lie modern generations have been told is that the more knowledge about things, the greater the happiness. That you need to know what happens half a world away from you, often in more detail than what happens at your doorstep.
What saddens me the most about the future generations is seeing how politicised they has become, politics the game of rich old people; the powers that be have figured out that if they turn what happens in the palace into entertainment, people are distracted and don't get into them silly ideas like trying to change things. These days politics is slapstick comedy for "grown ups", and it's sad to see it infect the younger generations now.
You might enjoy this piece by Charles Simic, which is a touchstone of mine:
"I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day."
(I haven't managed to stop reading the news unfortunately...)
Thank you for that. I really enjoyed it. It resonates with me. I have lived in three different countries, and in my two non-native countries, I have enjoyed my life much more. I think part of it is that there I have been somewhat oblivious to the news and current politics of the new places I have lived. I get some of news and politics from my friends, but I do not follow it like I used to in my country of origin. I have also dramatically reduced my news consumption in my native country, because I am not there very often, and it does not preoccupy me so much anymore. Though I have not given up the news entirely, either in my home country or in my adopted countries, but less is, I feel, much better.
I understand, fully and deeply, why news and current events are important, but they are also a cancer. At least in the way that they are sold to us. I also get a sense that the negative effect that the news has our mental health is quite widespread around the world. As in, it is not unique to America or Britain or European countries, etc.
It's my opinion that "thinking locally and acting locally" is a strategy better reserved for old age.
There is a war going on for your mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ne0DmiuHeg
Arguably religion used to provide that purpose but most of the Western world has walked away from it without choosing something to replace that sense of purpose. If, as Marx asserted, that religion was the opiate of the masses then the current "attention economy" is the methamphetamine of the masses.
What I have noticed about religion is that today's view of it is distorted. I see it as closer to psychology/sociology/civics. The description I see used today about ancient ideas of social cohesion is narrow minded with a hint of superiority.
> as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose
We tried out the grand visions to improve the human condition with one great push in the 20th century- didn’t work out so well
The failure of some grand visions doesn’t doom all future ones. That’s just silly.
Grand vision (or ideology as it’s also called) is a dead end of history - has been tried too many times, always failed spectacularly.
Instead we need small incremental lasting change - thinking we can transform life within a generation without repercussions, that’s just silly
Everyone knows that if at first you don’t succeed, never try again.
Grand visions are more in service of megalomaniacal egos than actual solutions. They all just paint over the very real complexities of the world and expect things to just work as they envisioned. Just get rid of the sparrows eating grains and it will just be fine! There are limits to what complexities can be contained within one human mind, and with a world already orders of magnitudes more complex than that we need the humility to admit that the vision of one human mind is not and cannot be all-encompassing. I think it is fair to say that the usefulness of grand visions is dead.
The Green Revolution, vaccines, and space exploration have been pretty great.
Literacy too!
It's not all about attention.
Most companies are still in it for the money, and attention is only a means to an end.
For the idiotic narcissist leaders that pop up every now and then, attention might be interesting by itself. But luckily for us, there's just very few of those. Most of our government bodies are comprised of people who actually mean to do good, and just a bit of attention to some important matters suffices.
i would add laziness too.
attention usually takes the path of least effort.
Change attention to intention
Attention is all you need?
This is a very deep thought that has crossed my mind quite a lot as I’ve used LLMs and other AI.
Ironically, we are discovering the human condition by evaluating what we are “not”.
… but, we are.
Attention is how we see ourselves reflected in others.
Brave New World and 1984 are books to avoid every extreme on politics, either left or right (put every Monopoly neocon fanboy, racist non-civic nationalist or burocratic socialist in there).
1984 looked scary, but BNW was hopeless. It exerced a much better control. The world of 1984 collapsed down itself.
What's wrong with BNW? Have you forgotten the islands?
Yeah, I have to re-read Brave New World because over the time since I have read it I have come to believe it was actually Utopian. The artists and others that could not conform were in fact given an island where like-minded artists could flourish.
Sometimes I think that's all we all want: to find a community of like-minded people we can live among.
On "The Island", well, it's the book Huxley wrote as a counterpart against BNW.
The islands in BNW: "[Bernard is] being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."
A person running for president of this country comes from show business and there are venture capitalists like Mark Andreeson who seriously talk about him as somebody who knows policy all because they can get a seat at the table.
A person ELECTED for president of the USA came from show business - Reagan.
A demented figurehead with other people behind him directing the show. It's as if acting was the perfect training for the worst idea for a position in a system of checks and balances.
As did Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
If I remember correctly, Trump was also elected once, as stupid as that is.
He dabbled in show biz though.
Congrats. You brainwashed yourself into believing only certain class of people can run the country. Founding fathers would be proud.
I think it's fair to say the "why not inject yourself with bleach!" people shouldn't be running the show while there's a class of people who do what people tell them without questioning whether it's a good idea. People in power have a responsibility not to suggest things that would kill people. That isn't a high bar.
This assumes people are stupid and have no intelligence of their own and needs to be told what they should be doing.
Not quite. It assumes that some people don't verify what they're told, and so follow what people in authority tell them. That means people in authority have a responsibility not to abuse their authority.
If everyone was rational and didn't do what they were told, choosing to verify everything and only follow what was appropriate, then the entire marketing, ad, government, legal, prison, etc industries would all collapse because they wouldn't be necessary any more. It's fairly obvious that there are people who follow dangerous, stupid advice.
Okay. That's fair.
I'd prefer that the people elected to lead are smarter than I am.
The founding fathers, not the founding parents.
Those slave-owners held it self-evident that all men had the unalienable right of liberty (among other rights.)
I can't remember 1984 well enough to remember any specific examples of doublethink, but they can't be as good as this one.
> The founding fathers, not the founding parents.
Sorry. Who among the founding fathers was women to call it parents? Founding fathers seems to be more accurate than founder Mothers or Founding parents.
And that should disqualify a presidential candidate… why exactly?
The OP did not express the idea properly: people are not prejudicially disqualified because of the industries they worked in, but intrinsic disqualification comes from twisted profiles. "Guts exciters", getting followers through seducing their lower instances, is one of them.
I am not labelling individuals here - but there are very many around the world fitting that description.
My question was rhetorical, since I knew the previous poster’s position was indefensible.
Whatever point you’re trying to make is also hilarious to watch. In democracy it does not matter what instincts were provoked to get the votes. Sometimes the person you didn’t like wins, and that’s part of the deal.
It ain't democracy if you ain't won.
-Vocal Minority, Intellectual Minority, Minorities et al.
Hey guys, what if good things were actually bad? Wow!! Instead of enjoying ourselves we should instead spend eight hours a day intently studying woodworking & tax policy. The fact that people enjoy talking to each other and looking at cat pictures on social media proves that people will accept fascism and that Western liberal democracy is fated for impotence.
There is a middle ground between woodworking and TikTok, no? People enjoyed talking to each other and had fun before we had technology.
It’s easy to see social media as harmless, and maybe it is, but it also has the potential to act as a powerful tool for serving propaganda and brainwashing.
I’m not suggesting an actual conspiracy theory here but it’s concerning that a few huge companies have the power to broadcast (and control) the flow of information to a majority of population, who will consume that information by and large without suspicion.
If for some reason Facebook or TikTok really wanted to meaningfully shift public opinion, they probably could, and in any direction they might choose.
I disagree that influence is really that malleable. Even if we take the power of selection algorithms for granted it is still constrained and must work with the 'winds' of the content posted. If they tried something 'simple' as promoting non-mammalian meat sources they would only succeed in creating memes mocking the concept.
Besides, the most "effective" influencer does next to nothing because they were going to do that sort of thing already. There is a reason you see music stars doing promotionals for pleasurable to consume caloried drinks as a use for personal funds and not say deferred gratification products like investment banking.
> before we had technology
There wasn't a time "before we had technology". Best to avoid that line of thinking if you want to escape the determinist (Veblem) trap and end up like Kaczynski.
Postman is an author we enjoy but seldom acknowledge the wider genre into which he fits. It's called "tech critique".
You can study it through the ages, comparing the outlooks and influences of Einstein, Ellul, Freud, Fromm, Heidegger, Illich, Kaczynski, Marcuse, Mumford, Nietzsche, and Postman, as well as sci-fi writers like Wells, Forster, Clarke, Gibson, Le Guin, Dick...It makes a very good companion to a study of the philosophy of science.
Some takeaways (at least ones that stick in my mind):
Technology is inseparable from the human condition, There are no primitivist escapes, noble savages or gardens of Walden.
By the same token there is not and won't ever be any golden age of Utopian technology.
Technology most closely resembles a "drug" in all its manifest functions.
Technology comes with an accumulative maintenance cost.
It is monotonic/directional. There's no easy way back and we can't uninvent stuff.
Minimising the _harms_ of technology while maximising the benefits and maintaining human dignity amidst it is the best we can do.
Even if initially excited by new developments all people are ultimately ambivalent about technology. They fear it, use it begrudgingly and resent their dependency on it. Iron bridges and steam locomotives raised the same questions as GPS and iPhones do today.
Many people romanticise and worship technology. It is a secular God.
If we "love" it, it's the sick love of an addict or the sadomasochistic power glee (tech "dealers" like Ellison, Zuck, and Musk)
A tiny few (that's us) enjoy a curious fascination that makes tech an "end in itself". Those people get used to create a supply for the dealers and addicts.
Anyway you gotta love Postman, if only for exquisite use of "centrifugal bumblepuppy". What he describes in this passage is really the soporific control/domination effects of technology in the hands of tyrants/dealers who delight in the subjugation of attention - which I think is made best by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.