Pokemon 'GO' - Another Dumbass "Game" For Digital Zombies

I first became aware of the latest app craze, Pokemon GO, on a CBS evening news segment which showed obsessed people staring into tiny screens with moronic grins, and running into traffic, sign posts and other (self-directed) pedestrians on their way to real jobs, appointments etc. Some of them were shown, including a girl, with bruises in the aftermath. In the latter part of the segment one group of these digital zombies had been lured (by a specific feature of the app) into a park where their money and cell phones were taken.

It's bad enough we have the usual gang of texting idiots working their tiny screens as they march distractedly down sidewalks and often into street traffic and walls,  jeopardizing their safety and that of others. Now we behold a new league of Pokemon GO zombies, captivated by "augmented reality" (it isn't truly virtual)  ready to join them.

Of course, the corporate entities who crafted this  idiocy are jumping for joy. Melanie Hobson, CBS financial contributor, practically climaxed in one interview on Wednesday morning gushing about the "cash cow" the app will introduce, as "all the Pokemon GO characters go for sale on app stores and elsewhere".  Even as she spoke you could hear the underlying rhythms of 'ka-ching!' - the corporate capitalist's favorite sound.  She estimated sales will go into the "hundreds of millions"  rivaling the previous Pokemon character craze a generation earlier.

This take of Ms. Hobson clearly shows that, contrary to corporate propaganda, the benefit of this new mutation of Pokemon isn't to "get kids outside in fresh air to exercise" or  "encourage family togetherness", it's to make tons of money!  No corporate honcho ever passed up a new iteration of the money-making shtick, and certainly not on behalf of positive contributions to society. As one cynical CEO put it, "We give people what they want, not what they need."

Let's take the nonsense that this stupid game, which is what it is, "promotes health and exercise". Well, not when so many kids are so obsessed with following non-existent creatures on mini-screens that they shuffle into traffic, bang into walls, street signs and each other - not to mention thieves who might do more than snatch their precious phones from them.

As other critics of this latest consumer fad have pointed out, it's not exercise when most of those tracking the Pokemon entities are "moving at glacial speed". After all, they have to often stop, get their bearings and ensure they have the various characters  positions' (especially in what's called a 'lure') and they're in the right location before ambling on. By contrast, real exercise would be speed walking or jogging, or even playing a game of pick up softball or hard ball (like we used to do when 12, 13) in a sandlot or park.

In addition, no health bonus redounds to the benefit of anyone - no matter what the "exercise" (pseudo or real) - unless diet is a part of it. But I warrant that when these Pokemon GO zombies aren't following their imaginary critters they are in front of TVs at home,  wolfing down Fritos, cheese dogs, Ho-Hos, chips and cokes - and not the diet kind either.

Another trope being spread as a benefit, which I actually heard come out of the mouth of an Asian guy on the same CBS segment was "I am now discovering new areas of the town where I live! It's almost magical!"  Hey, Sherlock, you could have "discovered" those places, including museums, parks before if you hadn't had your nose buried in a laptop screen or cell phone mini-screen wasting time playing useless app games or surfing cliphunter.

As another Chicago blogger noted, this ridiculous app adds to the existing problem of too many teens and younger kids being glued to their phones. Is it better than eye-gorging on porno? Of course! But that's like saying amoebic dysentery is preferable to cholera. The problem is the digital obsession which is dumbing down these kids, teens (even too many adults) when they could be using their precious time on Earth to learn something.

Author Mark Bauerlein (The Dumbest Generation), originally pinpointed the problem and I did a post about it 6 years ago, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/are-we-enabling-generation-of-uber.html

Bauerlein  focused on the over use of social media, especially Facebook. He documented how the under-30 crowd were foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout included their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment.

To make his case, Bauerlein cited Northwestern University communications professor Esther Hargatti (op. cit., p. 135) who complained  students’ choices were all too predictable. As Bauerlein put it in terms of the attention of young people:

“At number one stood Facebook (78.1%) followed by MySpace (50.7%). Only 5% checked a blog or forum on politics, economics, law or policy”

As he added, the “acclaimed empowerment” of the Web has gone entirely to “social stuff”.

Well now, evidently, it's gone to  literally generating digital zombies obsessively tracking non-existent ("augmented reality")  entities.  It merely compounds the tiny screen scene where almost every human these days seems to be living his or her life in miniature domains as opposed to real life.

In a way this is understandable as the real world is a scary place, again reinforced with the scenes last night from the truck terror attack in Nice, France. But in the end, one cannot hide from the real world by chasing imaginary beings in an augmented reality app.

Further, it merely adds to the psychological weight of citizen distraction and compounds the false consciousness already well entrenched  -  a fact that must inspire the Neoliberal elites to new heights of undermining the social, civic space. After all, who's paying attention? They're all chasing imaginary creatures and risking life and limb in the process.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/10/newsflash-your-kids-are-digital-zombies.html

And:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/15/all-around-the-world-authorities-are-worrying-about-pokemon-go/

Video Now Dominates Text On The Net? Probably - But It's Nothing To Cheer About!

Barely more than 2 weeks ago the New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson - in a CBS Early Show segment,  'What's the Big Idea?'', proclaimed there is now a major shift to video as opposed to text on the net. According to the Internet Trend Report quoted by Nora O'Donnell, "Video is dominating and the text Internet is experiencing a downturn".

Blogs such as mine, in other words, are going the way of the dinosaur. Most people would much rather be entertained by Youtube videos of a monkey in a cowboy hat riding on a Pit bull  or a kitten punching a puppy, than read through 600-1000 words of informative text.  The text, the blog post, may be about an unfamiliar subject, for example. And heck, life is too short to strain one's brain on the unfamiliar where you actually have to confront the issues and get the billions of prefrontal gray cells actively engaged.

The problem's corollary was originally articulated by author Mark Bauerlein in his book,The Dumbest Generation. He wrote (p. 138):

"For education to happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine and conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity.”

What that means, as he further observes, is one must move through and beyond the initial knee-jerk reaction: “I don’t get it! That’s not for me, not my cup of tea!”

because the intellectual effort in making it your ‘cup of tea’ will then be intellectually rewarding. Bauerlein again (ibid.):

“Nobody savors the process, but mature adults realize the benefits. Adolescents don’t and digital connections save them the labor of self-improvement…..the screen and cell bombard adolescents with youth trifles and the sporadic brush with challenging subjects that recall their shortcomings are quickly offset by a few minutes back in virtual comfort zones”

Besides, the "opportunity costs are high".  For the visual -oriented net user more enthralled by Snapchat, kitty videos and selfies, there's much more investment worth in those images than having to read a post concerning space physics - say the aurora, or deep politics or the effects of climate change on the environment.

Nicholas Thompson in his CBS morning spot, said this basically means "the (text)  internet is not growing as fast as it was. What is happening is that there is a huge shift from text to video and that's happening for a number of reasons."

He cites the limits in bandwidth in the "early days" which more or less forced the concentration on text - given it sucked up less BW than video. (Uploads slow, storage limited).

But:

 "Now that we have massive bandwidth and great connections, people love images. CEOs of all the major tech companies have notices people engage more with interactive images than they do with text. There is a massive, massive shift to the visual internet right now"

But could this be about something more significant than "a shift to greater bandwidth"? Might it be yet one more sign our culture is becoming alienated from reading, and hence infantilized?

Fortunately, the older generation has not yet been taken in by the video obsession to the same extant as Gen Y, as a graph shown on the TV spot  indicated that only 2 percent of over 55 net users are on Snapchat, as opposed to 23 percent of 13-17 year olds and 37 percent of 18-24 year olds. That is, more than half of net users (60 percent) have likely been infantilized in the age range 13- 24. To me, this is something to fear if this same demographic goes into the voting booths. But I somehow don't believe most will bother.

All of which reverts to Neal Postman's observations in 'The Disappearance of Childhood' on how Americans are increasingly being infantilized by preoccupation with visual images - and lose appreciation for text.

In his Chapter Seven (‘The Adult Child’), for example, Postman lays out a summary of his thesis on the disappearance of childhood in tandem with defining the modern conception of “adult” and what it has evolved (devolved?) into after the emergence of video culture. As he puts it, the modern idea of the adult “is largely a product of the printing press.” Further, almost all the attributes we associate with adulthood “are those either generated or amplified by a literary culture”. These include:


- A capacity for self-restraint

- A tolerance for delayed gratification

- A sophisticated ability to think sequentially and conceptually

- A preoccupation with both historical continuity and the future

- A high valuation of reason and hierarchical order


Postman then goes on to warn that as electronic (visual) media assume center stage “different attitudes and character traits come to be valued and a new, diminished definition of adulthood begins to emerge”. This new stunted version of the adult reaches its apotheosis (nadir?) in the adult child having arrived with the television-video age - which primary characteristic flattens out all differences between ages. A typical observation by Postman (p. 101) serves to clarify and lead to a fuller exposition:

"Television redefines what is meant by ‘sound judgment’ by making it into an aesthetic rather than a logical matter. A barely literate ten year old can interpret and at least respond to the information “given off” by a (political) candidate as easily and quickly as a well-informed 50 year old."


In other words, one required literary heft and markers - say in ability to read weighty, dense books (like James Joyce's Ulysses , or Milton's Paradise Lost, or Jean -Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness) to finally separate adults from children, adult minds from childish imitators.  Thus, literary culture and mature works provided the truest litmus test to distinguish an adult from a child.

Now, I am not saying or implying that those who don't read my blog posts as opposed to say,  spending time on Snapchat or Youtube,  are less informed about many issues or more childish. Rather, if they exclusively invest their time on those visual platforms they will (logically)  suffer in their knowledge base, irrespective of whether that means not reading my blog, or not reading books or newspapers. The point made is any kind of reading (especially outside one's comfort zone) is better than no reading at all. It is the latter condition which assures an infantilization because one will no longer be able to master complex thought, ideas.

Since most kids can't do that either, one mutates to the stage of an effective "kid".  One of the measures also used is the incidence of "difficult" words per page, of a book or post. Interestingly most people turn off their brains at 20 percent (e.g. 100 of say 500 words on a page is seen as the threshold.).  Thus, writers keeping the proportion to 5 percent or less (say 25 words) ensure the most reads.  But, as one psychologist (Dr. Pat Bannister) once put it, this basically" reduces the person to the level of a primary school student" (or 3rd grader in the U.S. context).

Remove reading and text entirely from one's life and what would you have? Well, I leave that question for readers to ponder on their own!

Brain Dead Morons Award 'The Martian' Golden Globes As A "Comedy"

Question; There is a science fiction film from 2015 in which an astronaut becomes abandoned on Mars after a monster dust storm. However, he manages to locate the left behind base of operations and use enough ingenuity to survive - by hydroponics - and staving off one mini-disaster after another. The movie ('The Martian') starring Matt Damon, was gripping as the astronaut faced each new crisis until eventually rescued.

Was this a comedy?

Not at all, not in a million years! It was a high profile drama of one astronaut's fight for survival on a hostile planet. Taking all it had to give and persevering by his own ingenuity. The film, based on a book by the same name, was a stirring testament to human survival in the face of insurmountable odds - and for that reason doesn't merit being downgraded and debased as "comedic".

So, how in the hell could it receive two Golden Globes as a comedy? Do the people awarding the prize even know the difference between a comedy and a drama? Did they even see the movie? Or, do they have their brains in their asses and simply confused the film with the 1960s comedy, 'My Favorite Martian'? Inquiring minds really want to know.

My theory is the Golden Globe awarders treated the film not as what it literally presented on screen (life or death drama) but as a "Poe".   For those who are blissfully unaware of the meaning of Poe, we have this,  according to the word gurus at Wikipedia :

"Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in August 2005.[2] The law emerged at the Creation & Evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com.[3] Like most such places, it had seen a large number of creationist parody postings and these parody posts were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war (a series of angry and offensive personal attacks) thinking it was a real post. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article. "

And subsequently (ibid.):

"However, the usage of the law has grown, and now the term "Poe" is almost synonymous with any parody on the internet. "

So, in other words, the Golden Globe folks came to perceive 'The Martian' not as the story of an astronaut stranded on Mars and fighting for survival, but as a parody of that -hence a "Poe"  And if it was a Poe, hell, it could as well be a comedy! But their thinking is misplaced, irrational as well as ignorant and I trace it to the gradual absorption and undermining of thought processes by the nation's preoccupation with the net and especially social media.

Hence, that the movie was not a "Poe" (or comedy) ought to be patently obvious to anyone with a grain of common sense and intellect. I trace this back to the "Facebook" effect, and the counterfactual nature of web reality itself which is now infecting millions of brains, mainly those of the young -say between 17- 29- putting them through multiple hysteresis loops toward an ultimate dumb down.

Much of this brain degeneration has already been dealt with by author Mark Bauerlein in his The Dumbest Generation. In his book he depressingly documents how the under-30 crowd are foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout includes their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment, far less earning a degree that actually means anything.

One dire consequence as regards higher level analysis and thinking (of which the "Poe" syndrome is an imitator): A delimited reality is confected via over-exposure which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books (determined by the median frequency of rare or difficult words per 1000 – with print newspapers at the top with 68.3 and pre-school books at 16.3)

The entire mental superstructure was revealed in the words of one 16 year old girl quoted (p. 137-38) when asked by a journalist if she wasn’t worried that she was denied a broader picture. Her illuminating retort: “I’m not trying to get a broader picture, I’m trying to get what I want”.

Out of the mouths of “babes”! But are we really helping to engender a generation of über-dumpkopfs? Maybe, maybe not. At the very least the Twitter-Facebook obsession (compulsion?) may be contributing to the emergence of a generation of pseudo-intellectual Babbits governed by their own opinions, supported by very little factual basis.

In this context, the awards presented to 'The Martian' as a comedy probably make perfect sense, in a twisted logic way.

At least one tweet in the wake of the show was from a woman (Sady Doyle):

"It is a bold and exciting move to deem "The Martian" a comedy but I think all our efforts to avoid dying alone are essentially comic, so"

Actually, Sady, it is a hopelessly dumb move to do so. And if this is the case I can see the time soon coming when most of our brain-debased young "netizens" will soon find comedy in homeless children dropping dead from hunger or diseases. Which is sure to make all the Repukes happy!

And btw, the efforts of humans to "avoid dying alone" are emphatically not "comedic", but again this likely shows how brains have been gutted by PR, propaganda and false Poe perceptions.

Newsflash! Your Kids ARE Digital Zombies!

If these kids aren't digital. zombies, then what are they? Certainly not living in the present and attending to the larger world.

Bill Maher, in his last ('New Rules') segment of Real Time Friday night,  merits kudos for calling out all the selfie stooges - including the recent mobs in Philly and NYC trying to capture Pope Francis on their smart phones - looking through their mini screens - instead of taking in the moment directly. (Not to mention the assorted kids with a 1 in a million chance to actually meet and see the Pope facing backwards and doing selfies with him.).

But the ubiquitous selfie is but one symptom of the zombification of the nation, especially its younger generations.  We also behold texting zombies - heads buried in their phones- walking along side walks, crossing busy streets or even driving cars - oblivious to the reality around them. They also display an alarming .similarity to actual zombies in their sidewalk shuffles and guttural, incomprehensible responses when you attempt to make conscious contact, e.g. "Urrrgh", "Unhhh".  Can we then agree if it walks like a zombie, and expresses itself like a zombie it is, for all intents, a zombie?

The WSJ's Alice Gopnik ('No, Your Children Aren't Becoming Digital Zombies', Oct. 10-11, p. C2) doesn't believe so. She cites study after study purporting to show there are no ill effects and all is pretty close to normal. She also revives the old "happened in older generations" Mcguffin, by trying to compare the behavior  we're seeing now with smart phones to the telegraph! Are you kidding me? She seriously quotes a hand wringer from the year 1858 about the telegraph being too "unsifted, superficial and too sudden for the truth".

But of course,  this is a false analogy,  irrespective of what any critic of the time said or wrote. For one thing, the telegraph was not ubiquitous like smart phones are today. You had to actually enter a post office or wireless station to send a message off, and even then there were absolutely NO images...only terse wording. There was no way - given the costs - one could use it to communicate with peers minute by minute or second by second as texters can now. Hell, there was no speed of long distance communication such as allowed and enabled today by the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Hence, Gopnik compares chalk and cheese.

The point she misses in her Pollyanish prose is that there is indeed cause to worry given how the dominance of imagery has weakened communication as well as literacy skills in adults.  I already have noted this in previous posts referencing the findings of Neil Postman in his masterful book, 'The Disappearance of Childhood’.

Postman’s thesis is subtle to grasp because it is two-pronged. He showed how the continued intrusion of visual media via television (and now smart phones, I-phones and the internet)  has stripped childhood of its innocence, even as he showed the same media has effectively rendered adults as children. The effect has been to create “adult-children” and ‘child adults”.

Thus, nearly all current TV fare adults can watch, like 'Survivor', kids can also watch. The visual medium itself - integrated into the use of iPads, TVs and smartphones, makes the reduction of the world to a visual medium the same for all ages. Hence, child adults, and adult children. Taking selfies, as the scenes of Francis also showed, are as much the province of kids as adults. Thus, one beholds a regression of modern day adults to the state of children - again via their over use of electronic media.

Many may be surprised, but in fact the era of true adulthood only seemed to last a short time, certainly in western culture.

In the period following print typography, a new world of symbolic abstraction based on the printed word emerged, and the human adult with it. As this adult became more solidified and print became the basis for separating the adult mind from the child’s – the social construction of “childhood” had to be created. This was to more easily distinguish child activities and media from what adults consumed. Thus, it was expected even as recently as 60 years ago that no child would be paging through Playboy, or for that matter Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and no adult in his or her right mind would be glued to 'Howdy Doody' or 'Superman' on the tube. In either case, there would be cause for serious intervention (in the child reading Sartre case, it would be positive, say the kid  skipping 7-10 years of school to go directly to first year university.)

Postman's point is that before about 300 years ago the “child” as such didn’t exist in the social sphere. The child before about 1650 was treated as a small adult, had to work in the coal mines along with his more mature relations, as well as toil in the fields. There were no child clothes, child games as such or child distinctions.

The arrival of print changed all that because it disclosed the need for the young to be properly trained to assume a role in a world in which lack of print mastery exacted great social costs. The mastery of print required also a certain skill set totally contingent on the ability to process the printed word including: the ability to sit still and focus  for protracted periods, the ability to sequentially process abstract (phonetic) symbols, the ability to master logical –rational thought.

The point missed by those like Gopnik is that the child-adult transition is now nearly impossible because of the ubiquity of electronic media. This indeed, has been proven in research such as by Mark Bauerlein, ('The Dumbest Generation'). showing FB users, for example, have been conditioned to accept a "single-minded attachment or obsession which has contributed to an artificial,  solipsistic view of the world"

Thus, instead of being a channel of information and genuine knowledge consolidation, the monitor screen becomes a mirror for the users’ own limited selves and under-developed psyches. That Facebook would insinuate itself into a life to the extent of excluding so much else in the world is not surprising, and Bauerlein shows how this is done by blocking out all unwanted material on one's FB pages. Most of this material turns out to be dealing with complex issues of news, global conflicts etc - hence the elimination indulges the child yen for a pain-free world minus any negatives.

But Facebook is but one medium. We now know from research (that Gopnik totally ignores)  that legions of kids are already seriously addicted to  online games, and it's gotten so bad in China that the gamers have had to be interred in "boot camps", e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/09/chinese-get-serious-with-their-net.html


As noted above, for the Chinese, screen addiction of any type is now classified as a clinical disorder and they've taken serious measures to break their young addicts of their screen dependence - whether it's to their smart phone, or laptop via some gaming app. At Daxing Boot Camp in Beijing, one of 400 rehab centers created to treat net addicts, calisthenics, group therapy. some mild ECT and a complete lack of screens. You can bet your bippy if the problem is severe in China this screen addiction is equally severe here in the U.S. all Gopnik's cited studies to the contrary.

Gopnik also neatly sidesteps how digital bullying has now evolved to the number one form, and we won't even go into the increasing prevalence of porn addiction - such that many teens (according to a recent Economist report, Sept. 26th, p. 59)) are having to seek help at sites like "No fap". The report cites a pan-European study from 2010 that found 14 % of 9 to 16 year olds had seen porn in the previous year - and this was prior to the advent of smart phones and iPads which make the stuff easier to access for kids.  Further, March Childline and NSPCC - two charities serving kids - found that one in ten British 12-13 year olds described themselves as "addicted to porn". If these stats are such in the UK you can be certain they are as bad or worse here in the U.S.

Gopnik, at the end of her piece asks:

"So why, despite the research and all those failed prophecies of previous technological doom are people so convinced that this time it's different?"

Well, because it is! In the old days drivers weren't killed at a 20 percent higher rate (reported last year) because of "texting while driving". You had to sit in your home with your trusty Smith Corona and type your messages out. You didn't do it in a car!  In the old days also kids couldn't bully their peers by long distance, sending nasty messages over the smart phone. You had to get up close and personal and settle issues with your fists right then and there. No hiding behind a screen.

And as for porn, it wasn't ubiquitous on some 800 million websites (hell, no internet even existed then) all accessible by smart phones, as The Economist notes. You had to actually get up off your duff and hoof it down to the corner 7-11 and plunk down 50 cents to buy the latest Playboy - and hope the counter clerk didn't ask your age.

So YEAH, it IS different in quality and quantity. A pity those like Gopnik don't see that, but then - working for the WSJ - her job is as much to feed and "grease"  the wheels of consumer frenzy (especially in time for Xmas) as it is to spout specious opinions.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/11/turn_off_your_fking_phone_and_talk_to_me_sherry_turkle_on_why_im_not_the_darth_vader_of_social_media/
 

What's the Point of a Professor? More Than You Might Imagine

Evidently,  Emory professor Mark Bauerlein's recent NY Times essay really raised a hue and a cry. In his piece Bauerlein asked “What’s the Point of a Professor?” and answered (in part) that what they should be is examples of “moral authority,” but for a number of reasons they are increasingly becoming morally bankrupt “accreditors” instead.  I'd go even further and say they are almost becoming redundant appendages or even jokes, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-prof-tries-to-fail-his-whole-class.html

Bauerlein's piece inevitably stirred up the proverbial hornet's nest as many professors took umbrage at both Bauerlein’s definition of what a professor should be and his own entitlement to make such assertions.. Indeed, University of Rhode Island History professor Erik Loomis  argued whether Bauerlein should even be in the position to be deciding what other professors are supposed to be. But, good cripes, as a professor with valid experience at one in a 4-year university, why shouldn't he be?

For his part, Bauerlein - in a salon.com interview-  emphasized that his target was four-year colleges where students pursue BA and BS degrees, which is certainly a limitation on the commentary.  He observed:

"The situation at two-year colleges and with vocational education is certainly different. And within that four-year population we have differences among liberal arts colleges, religious institutions, large state universities, etc. But I stand by the general drift, which is sustained by data from NSSE, the American Freshman Survey, the College Senior Survey, Academically Adrift, and longitudinal studies of grade and homework time."

Bauerlein also pointed out that it is even more important that professors impress upon students the moral meaning of their studies. College is a unique time of life, and it passes quickly, and it shouldn't be all about beer keggers, sports, sex hookups and goofing off.  In fact, as Bauerlein put it, most college students will "never again have the chance to discuss why Paolo and Francesca have to suffer so long [for the sin of lust in Canto V of Dante's "Inferno"], what makes the opening measures of Wagner’s “Tristan” so great, who the Neocons were…"    And I would add, never again have the chance to investigate the physics of light or atoms in a properly equipped lab, or learn about the innards of stars.

Bauerleitn's point was impressing upon students a higher eloquence of knowledge, including the significance of the past, the cultivation of taste, the basis for scientific discovery and all the other things that youth culture and mass culture  currently disregard. Indeed, students that dismiss these aspects of college education are likely squandering the most long lasting capital - more important than any job (which may only last a few years). The most perceptive take  on this appeared in an article('The Myth of Higher Education') by Dr. Steven B. Mason in an issue of Integra (No. 9, Oct.  2010) the journal of Intertel:

"the bottom line regarding a well -rounded education is that it has nothing to do with any kind of bottom line. Its value (non-monetary) is to be found in the quality it adds to one's life. It allows one to better appreciate music, art, history and literature. It contributes to a better understanding of language and culture, nature and philosophy. It expands rather than limits horizons and replaces faith and belief with reason and logic"

Mason adds that it "teaches a person to live - not to earn a living" and that living encompasses an impetus for further learning just for its own sake. If a fantastic, well-paying job also comes with it, that's icing on the cake.  This pretty well dovetails with Bauerlein's message as well.

Regarding critical thinking, Bauerlein is also on the mark, relating the importance of having background knowledge of a subject before one can apply critical thinking. We need to build familiarity with significant historical, cultural, political, scientific  phenomena as a prerequisite to critical thinking. (This is the longstanding argument of E.D. Hirsch’s cultural literary project.) The question is what counts as significant. Those who think that critical thinking can be cultivated as easily through the study of “Breaking Bad”  or 'Dexter' as through the study of “Paradise Lost” are naive. We need great books and high culture, works of gravitas and  genius as well as close examination of  events of historical import, political theory and religious doctrine.  We need to inculcate in students to give attention to creations that have stood the test of time, that possess aesthetic excellence and introduce youth to the full range of human experience. Identity is no criterion of selection, nor is political correctness, nor ideology.

Bauerlein raised similar points in his book,“The Dumbest Generation,”, on how all these serious facets of knowledge were more and more being ignored by the younger generation in favor of superficial, social media dilettantism and  time wasting. If any subject was then considered too difficult or troublesome it was ignored.

The result has created a generation of adolescent infants who,  while physically mature, think and behave like overgrown toddlers. Much of this, according to Bauerlein, began with the impetus to "youth self-authorization" in the mid twentieth century - and particularly the invention of a new species of American social creature: the teenager.

Before 1955 or so and the beginning of the 'rock 'n roll' era, teenagers didn't exist. The culture of rock music in tandem with its promoting media (e.g. 'American Bandstand', Ed Sullivan Show) created them with the constant reference to "teenagers"  -reinforced by the rock song titles ('Teenager in love', 'Teen Angel', etc.) Thereby granted specious autonomy as a distinct culture, the "teens" went one further and also extended themselves separate authority - including the authority to render judgments on the adult world and its doings.

What began as the counter culture (and in fact, helped to end the Vietnam War and racial segregation etc.) then became warped and grossly segregated from the larger society in the digital age. As Bauerlein notes:

"The digital age has accelerated the process of “age segregation.” With social media, youths can now spend all their time communicating with one another. It’s easy to tune out the grown-ups: just open that screen."

But, the downside is the kids that have succumbed to this vapid electronic social media void are left in a self-reinforcing bubble of infantile choices, obsessions and thinking. How can it be otherwise when they are so enslaved by their smart phones and texting they can't attend to the education they're supposed to be participating in?













Me, giving an astrophysics lecture in 1980. The idea of pulling out a small device to act as a personal distraction would have been unthinkable back then  - even if they existed.

Back in the early 1980s such distractions as miniature electronic devices, e.g. cell phones, smart phones, Apple watches etc. didn't exist. Students in courses - whether English Lit or astronomy - gave their undivided attention and were the better for it.  Even if such devices did exist, I am convinced these gadgets wouldn't be misused like they are now. Contrast that with the current situation where it's been found Americans now possess an attention span of 8 seconds, a degradation almost certainly to be blamed on addiction to digital media.


Bauerlein again:

They spend ever less time paying attention to grown-ups, and so when a teacher insists that they come in to the office for a face-to-face exchange, many of them falter and resist. We have to break through their reserve and show them that the peer-absorbed world they generally occupy is something to escape in college, not extend.

Most interesting is Baeurlein's take on those who have responded negatively to his book, observing:

The vast majority of emails are blunt, trivial exercises, a way of avoiding substantive contact. The tool invites it. It promotes quick info and casual address. (Some being, “Hey…”) This is one reason I disallow laptops and tablets in class. Close that screen!

Baeurlein's complaint is one I've made a number of times in different posts. That is, the very nature of most electronic media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) is such that it facilitates 'shoot from the hip' reactions as opposed to reflective ones.  Such digital dumping can occur with mindless responses to a serious matter, such as Marilyn Mosby's recent announcement of charges on 6 Baltimore cops, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/conservative-twitterati-try-to-go-after.html

Or it can manifest as imbecilic rants from racists - say to the selection of a "Miss America" candidate they see as "un-American" e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/09/dumbass-racists-lash-out-at-beautiful.html

The point is that the built in limits (140 characters for tweets) almost ensures blatherskite and bombast as opposed to thought. The repetition of such reduced communication almost ensures - along with the diminishing attention span  - we may end up like the nation portrayed in Mike Judge's spoof  'Idiocracy'.

Bauerlein's other point about prompting "quick info" - e.g. from rapid Googling, is also on the mark,  and some would argue it's the only way to get information. To which I'd respond, that if you don't also know how to go to one of those old fashioned buildings called libraries (even if they have computers) and use them to locate actual source periodicals and books, you are fooling yourself.

You may also wish to consider what will transpire that fateful day, 100 years past Peak Oil (estimated to have been in 2005),  when electronic devices only work for limited periods or require special generators since the main power grids have all collapsed - both from lack of maintenance and .....energy to drive them.

Sadly, Bauerlein's call for imparting moral authority will likely fall on deaf ears, since most profs and students have already been acculturated to the Neoliberal mode of consumption as the only "authority", i.e. for the "marketplace".

Sorry, If You Get Your Politics From Jon Stewart It Doesn't Count!

It seems within weeks of the Boston Globe proclaiming there absolutely was no "deflategate" they've since asserted Comedy Central guy Jon Stewart "shaped the cultural attitudes of a generation".  Which leads to the question: Was it for better or worse?

We already know, for example, that according to author Mark Bauerlein (The Dumbest Generation), the under-30 crowd are foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social media mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout includes their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment, far less earning a degree that actually means anything. (A survey and test several years ago found even a majority of Harvard grads flunked a basic test on American History.)

The entire mental superstructure was revealed in the words of one girl quoted (p. 137-38) when asked by a journalist if she wasn’t worried that she was denied a more in depth  picture of the world by  confining attention to Facebook. Her illuminating retort:

“I’m not trying to get a broader picture, I’m trying to get what I want”.

But this may also account for why the same demographic (a good majority of them anyway) gravitates to Stewart's show as a kind of ersatz medium by which to pick up political insight. After all, he's delivered terrific zingers at the likes of the Fox News morons, including Bill O'Reilly as well as the goobers in Congress.

But zingers, or as one critic put it, "shits and giggles",  doesn't make the cut for serious, in depth political news or reporting. I maintain, as I have for many years, that if you don't read newspapers you can't get a handle on the political news. (TV news doesn't cut it either). Even more important, if you don't read widely outside the mainstream media, you will be in no position to master deep politics which now undergirds our political system. Is Jon Stewart going to  bring you into deep politics? Hell no, because he barely touches the normative form.

Bloomberg columnist Clive Crook perhaps put it in plainest terms when he noted "the generation in question relies on a comedy show for its news and engages with politics mainly through jokes"

Adding, that "perhaps I am missing something but that seems less than ideal."

In fact, it not only seems so but is. It proclaims we're incepting a generation of know-nothing goof balls who don't even vote consistently (as in the critical mid-terms) and need the excitement of a personality to grab them. I call them political dilettantes and woefully uneducated on this nation's most pressing issues. Jokes then, don't cut it.

Yes, I also like to watch Bill Maher's Real Time and get some laughs, but I don't believe it's a substitute for reading newspapers and more importantly parsing the PR and distinguishing it from substantive news within them. The latter is enabled by also reading books, on deep politics (including Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine') as well as Howard Zinn's "A People' History of the United States')

It is this reading which amps up one's vocabulary to the point of ably mastering more difficult books, sources and which then confers deeper political and historical insights. By contrast, how can the Jon Stewart followers assimilate a factual basis when the language to describe much of what is happening in the world’s most critical domains exceeds the language difficulty level to which they’re accustomed?

Just take what is happening in the world of global finance right now, with events in Greece - regarding repaying  its debt -  that could affect all of Europe and even the U.S.  (Say if Greece leaves the E.U.) Do the Tweeters and such even know why oil prices recently fell and why they are climbing now? Do they know what's behind the events in Ukraine? How many of the Twitter-Facebook generation are aware of any of this? How many even think it’s relevant to their lives?

As for 'The Daily Show', as Crook points out:

"The problem was the program's fans began to take it seriously, and academics with nothing better to do began to take it seriously, and worst of all the show began to take itself seriously".

Which is to say it became a parody of itself and at that point no longer relevant. (Maybe why Stewart decided it was time to depart, along with wanting to spend more time with family. In other words, he realized that family time superseded the value of the content time on  'The Daily Show')

The trouble is that while political comedy can be entertaining it provides no ballast. Just as no sane person would consume the juicy looking steak depicted in the corner of a cardboard menu in place of the genuine article, so also no sane person should consume comedy and theatrics believing it's the real deal, It isn't.

But perhaps the problem is too many brains have now been so gutted by PR and fake news that the owners can no longer discern what is a serious issue and what isn't.  Hence, the insipid spectacle of millions of  people engaging in a stupid "debate" about the color of a dress sent via Tumblr.  "It was black and blue! No dammit, it was white and gold!"

No people in a serious, politically stable nation would do such a thing - waste their time on such trivial idiocy. But perhaps this is the point most of us have devolved to. Consumers only capable of raising a hue and cry over the color of a dress, but not over our political fabric (or physical infrastructure) and how both are coming apart.

In the end, I suspect false attention to trivial bullshit will only amplify so long as people remain uneducated and unread. (And merely possessing a college degree doesn't ensure this!) More willing to waste time in spurious social media realms with assorted 'likes' and posting images of their kitties boxing doggies than reading and learning about the world they inhabit. As Mark Bauerlein notes (p. 138):

“For education to happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine and conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity.”

What that means, as he further observes, is one must move through and beyond the initial knee-jerk reaction: “I don’t get it! That’s not for me, not my cup of tea!”  Because the intellectual effort in making it your ‘cup of tea’ will then be intellectually rewarding.

In the same way moving beyond the infantile "familiar" world of political jokiness requires a mature temperament, but the required intellectual effort in moving to real politics and deep politics means one can finally emerge as a citizen, as opposed to a consumer.

At that stage, there is a significant intellectual reward, which also serves the interests of one's nation in the best way possible. As Thomas Jefferson put it in his 'Notes on Virginia':

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."

Jefferson understood that a citizen "depository" of false beliefs and misinformation would ultimately destroy the Republic on account of the regression of citizens' minds,  not improvement. He understood that citizens to attain this improvement needed to read widely and in a focused fashion and not believe anything without supporting evidence. He might also have added, they ought not substitute frivolous comedic fare for actual knowledge of history, governance and related matters.

A Challenge: Can You Go 99 Days Without Facebook?

The blog post header refers to an experiment, or perhaps more accurately, a mission, proposed by the Dutch group '99 Days of Freedom' - to  see if Facebook users can break off from its use for 99 whole days, or just over three months. They warrant the users will be a lot happier, but need to have people carry out the proposed mission to see.

Most of us not living under rocks have already heard or read of the Facebook -conducted experiment  in which the social media site conducted an "emotional manipulation" investigation on 689,000 unknowing users. Evidently, at assorted odd times, FB inserted negative news stories on the users' news pages to see if they elicited negative emotional reactions. This was kind of dopey since it's already well known that media can shape our thinking - for good or ill - depending on the stuff we allow into our cranium. Thus, if we watch only FOX and listen to Limbaugh,  our brains will likely be distorted and accept nonsense few other literate citizens would, such as that:  "Saddam caused 9/11" or "Obama is a terrorist sympathizer" or "Obama lacks a legitimate birth certificate".

As for Facebook, it has its social uses but can also be somewhat of a burden, and the content on most of it is nowhere near the more in -depth material found on most blogs. Basically, people can throw up whatever they want including images of kitties beating doggies, lizards crapping on flowers, or even obnoxious pseudo-political content which I'd prefer not to describe. But those are a few reasons I spend little time on Facebook, other than to make the occasional connections with family -who find FB more convenient to use than email. (It's true that some bloggers too put junk political stuff on their blogs, as well as outrageous images, but they're not likely to be taken seriously and have few followers.)

Facebook has also been maligned on account of  breeding into users a "single-minded attachment or obsession which has contributed to an artificial,  solipsistic view of the world" (cf. Mark Bauerlein, 'The Dumbest Generation'). Thus, instead of being a channel of information and knowledge consolidation, the monitor screen becomes a mirror of the users’ own limited selves and under-developed psyches. That Facebook would insinuate itself into a life to the extent of excluding so much else in the world is not surprising, and Bauerlein shows how this is done by blocking out all unwanted material on one's FB pages.  Author Sara Scribner  herself noted (salon.com piece)  that while she first joined to share family photos it gradually descended into random, driven 'rummaging' and time wasting. As she put it:

"We know the pattern by now. That initial rush arrives with the first “like,” comment, or share. Then it becomes a habit. Instead of reading a book or the newspaper, I would troll through my friends’ pictures or comments, jumping from one stray, random idea to another. I was feeling fragmented, even a bit wasted, by the end of my daily FB journey."

Adding to the preceding are the encumbering (and often discomfiting) social burdens imposed,  a phenomenon of interjected -interlinked differing social milieus and often clashing personas that needed to be reconciled. As she described it:

"I had to switch roles often on Facebook. Students at the school where I work would friend me, and then I would have to alter my comments"

This effect emerges because one's "friend" universe is often populated by radically different people and types. So, for example, how do you navigate your FB world if one half is made up of religious or very conservative family members, and the other half made up of very liberal and non-religious (other) family members, and friends?  Well, you have to tread carefully because it can be a literal minefield, especially when a hyper-liberal friend happens to see what s/he regards as an offensive comment from a conservative family member.  So you're constantly having to steer clear of 'oil mixing with water' situations or whatever.

Sara Scribner herself describes it thusly:

"It’s not easy to make all these projected selves cohere: My friends and family include folks from Southern evangelical Christianity, from the rap/rock critic subculture, from ’90s bohemia, from mommy-land, from the public-education universe. My guess is that most people on social media have some variation of this problem. In life, I entered each space separately; on Facebook, it all happened simultaneously."

But that's another reason I use FB infrequently: first, because the odds are high I'm liable to run into comments or images I don't like - so I won't be compelled to "like" them or be outraged by them enough to respond, and second, there's too little dimension for more complex expression of thought, which a blog post allows. Truth be told, for communication purposes - especially on important issues-  I actually find email much superior.

And all that brings us to this new Facebook experiment, or should I say - on Facebook, In this case, a Dutch group ('99 Days of Freedom')  is asking users of FB to see if they can go 99 whole days without once bringing it up on one's computer, liking anything, or posting any pictures or comments. The group is interested in finding out if people would be happier without Facebook. (I suspect many people would be happier if they just limited their FB use. I mean 2 hours a day ought to be enough for anyone.)

So far, according to the Washington Post, over 100,000 users have signed on to the freedom pledge.

Meanwhile, Sara Scribner was able to totally go 'cold turkey' after seeing how much time she was wasting. The fact that she could do it shows perhaps anyone else can, if they set their mind to it!

"Online Readers Are Too Picky! Too Much Skimming, Scanning!" Really?

The essay in last Sunday's Denver Post ('Skimming and Scanning Online News') was curious for presuming to be enlightening but it really wasn't. Author Michael Rosenwald noted an earlier article he wrote for The Washington Post in which he asserted that too much "skimming and scanning" of online news as well as blogs  was "messing with our ability to read deeper and longer works."

He then observed in the current article that his earlier piece "had gone viral"  (including inciting Twitter and Facebook debates - ironic in itself) and "even on Craig Ferguson's CBS 'Late Late' Show".   Rosenwald, noting all this, then asked:

"But here's a question for the digital age: Did all those readers actually read the story? Lots of people joked about this on Twitter, with variations of 'I skimmed this'"

I interject here that Twitter isn't really designed for an in- depth discussion given its text limits. Hence, it is the ideal medium for encouraging flighty, sound bite attention spans. Facebook isn't much better, but at least it allows more space for comments - not that a serious person would post any examination of political or economic events there. Again, it's more a social schmooze site. If you want to explore Obamacare in depth, or the unwise Obama decision to send U.S. troops to eastern Europe in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, FB is not the place to do it. Instead you create a blog and then expatiate, preferably disclosing your reasoning at each point.

Given this background, Rosenwald's next observations make eminent sense:

"The good folks at Chartbeat, which tracks how people read digital content, performed an analysis and found that 25 percent of readers didn't even scroll past the headline and photograph to the text of the article. A smaller percentage of readers dropped off somewhere toward the middle of the story. And 31 percent made it all the way through (I have a lollipop for that group)."

But again this ought not be astounding news. Anyone who runs any kind of serious blog - as opposed to one featuring favorite recipes, wrestling babies or kitty-doggy boxing matches, can see the same trend.  Most people simply don't want to invest in any  extended, brain-demanding account or post. They prefer the shorter variants and not too much heavy stuff.  Keep it fluffy and light with large dollops of yucks.

Rosenwald's consult with Chartbeat's chief data scientist, Josh Schwartz, confirms this.  Schwartz informed him that on average one -third of news readers never make it to the end. In some cases, up to 90 percent say goodbye without even reading. Schwartz added that "most people don't read the article they land on." The same trends apply to serious blogs, with mostly serious (including scientific content).

As an aside, there can be remarkable exceptions. For example, my first post on the applications of differential equations last year already has more than 1200 reads and still counting. But this may merely show a large proportion of college age readers who are doing differential equations at university and found the application examples useful. Most other math blog posts barely reach 25-30 reads.

Taking this to heart, Rosenwald writes, concerning the skimming, scanning folks:

"They look for key words and if something excites them, they read. If not, they scamper around.  There is apparently a lot of scampering. This is how we deal with the superabundance of information online."

He then describes how this flightiness has crept into his normal reading, to the extent of starting to read novels and other longer works - then putting them down.

Is any of this really amazing? Not really! It was originally elaborated by Mark Bauerlein in The Dumbest Generation,   Bauerlein mainly zoomed in on the under 30 crowd who were  "foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world" of their own egos and selves. The fallout included their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment, far less earning a degree that actually means anything. (A survey- test circulated at the time the book was released found a majority of Harvard grads flunked a basic test on American History.)

The general takeaway was that the digital media used, whether Facebook,Twitter or just  cell messages all contributed to an artificial solipsistic world filtered by the egocentric dispositions of the users. Instead of being a channel of information and knowledge consolidation, the monitor screen becomes a mirror of the young users’ own limited selves and under-developed psyches.
So, all the things that bother and bore them are blocked out. The people they don’t know and don’t want to know they can exclude at the touch of key. A new bomb may have been developed by Iran, and an earthquake may have killed thousands in China, but in the case of most Facebook and Twitter  users it’s the old monkey show: “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” .

A delimited reality is  thereby confected which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books (determined by the median frequency of rare or difficult words per 1000 – with print newspapers at the top with 68.3 and pre-school books at 16.3).

This is illuminating. Because if most scanners and skimmers are only at the level of  recognizing 20-25  difficult words per page they will not be able to handle a newspaper story (or a serious blog post) with 68-75 difficult words per page. No surprise then that most newspaper stories will not be read, and only titillating stories get attention.

Of course, this means the same people can vote, and one must be concerned how informed they are when they do. Beyond that, are they even able to read a lengthy ballot properly?

Rosenwald adds at the end:

"Cognitive scientists are worried about this trend. And they should be."

Indeed!

Welcome, Millennials and Other New Brane Space Readers! But....There's Much More Material Here Besides 'Abby Huntsman's Hijinks'!

Scanning over the blog statistics the past week I see almost one thousand new Brane Space readers, which is very gratifying - especially considering I don't do "Facebook" - so it's clear certain stories are spreading via word of mouth or links sent to others via e-mail.  The one which has attracted the most reads by far, however, is the April 6th entry:  'Bernie Sanders Schools Millennial Moron Abby Huntsman on Bill Maher's REAL TIME'. 

When I put that blog up last Friday night, almost as an afterthought , I figured it might attract some eyeballs but not anywhere near 856 at last count. (But this is still far fewer than the 3,700 hits for last June's Venus transit of the Sun.) 

The blog itself referenced Millennials, Generation Ys and Huntsman as perhaps (hopefully!) an outlier example of what author Mark Bauerlein has called "the dumbest generation". He referenced this as pertaining to those embedded almost entirely in social media like Twitter and Facebook and hence seldom leaving those solipsist, self-referenced cocoons to read or explore any other venues, subjects or areas - especially which may appear too challenging at first glance.

What I hope, however, is that if Millennials are pouring in to read the post on Abby Huntsman, they will also move eyeballs to the right column and check out all the other blogs, articles which will be seen to be of an eclectic variety.  The emphasis then is on diverse content, and much of it is expressly designed for a college level or college age audience.

As I wrote in my inaugural blog (in 2007) launching Brane Space.

"The name for this blog implies multi-dimensional (or multi-faceted) content in time. I will blog on aspects of science (especially astronomy, astrophysics, quantum mechanics etc.) as well as on pseudo-science (astrology, Velikovskianism etc.), philosophy, religion, mathematics and even economics. Most of the time the blogging will simply reflect ruminations on current events, developments or scientific discoveries, but sometimes the writing will embody current worries......whether of economic malaise and dollar decline, or global warming, or perhaps when the next major asteroid may strike Earth....My main goal is to provide captivating content that enlightens and maybe entertains as well."

I suppose in many ways the 'Abby Huntsman' blog was "entertaining" - but I hope new blog readers, especially many Millennials (because they appear to be most interested in a fellow Millennial) will understand that only eating ice cream without any veggies, will not be conducive to health. In this case, one's mental health, intellect, .....the point Bauerlein made in his book, i.e.

"For education to happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine and conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity"

So, enjoy the Abby blog, but don't let the other content -unfamiliar though it may be-  turn you off!

Bernie Sanders Schools Millennial Moron Abby Huntsman on Bill Maher

Here is a cautionary note for any up and coming "Millennials" (aka Generation Ys) seeking to make a bigger and brighter name for themselves over the tube: Educate yourselves first! Abby Huntsman's pathetic appearance last night on Bill Maher's Real Time, reminded me why we have books like Mark Bauerlein's  The Dumbest Generation  widely circulating.

Huntsman, much like the woefully ignorant 'Kennedy' (aka Lisa Kennedy) last year on Maher's show ( in regard to global warming - who spouted "Sunspots!" as the reason)  had to be schooled by Sen. Bernie Sanders on the details of the Chained CPI (i.e. Obama's proposed cut via changing the cost of living to inflation index for seniors on Social Security). She also had no clue, not one, that the federal budget game isn't stacking her Gen Y bunch against my Boomers, but rather BOTH our groups against the Military Industrial Complex, which is sucking us all dry.

But instead of being informed, demonstrating some scintilla of education, she whined about "My generation - what're they gonna do?" like a sniveling nitwit. Bernie tried his best to educate this star of  'Huffpost Live' - in the brief spans of time allotted to him - between her interruptions, as well as those of the congenital moron Stephen Moore. But it seemed at times she was more invested in getting her two cents in than in listening to what the elder statesman Sen. Sanders had to say - given he has about 40 years more experience in the political -economic world. 

I know not all Millennials are clones of either Kennedy or Ms. Huntsman, but so far the feature performances are not inspiring.

Regarding 'The Dumbest Generation', readers may recall from a blog three years ago that it revealed how a whole generation of youth (mainly Generation Y'ers) were being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance, and their addiction to digital crap, and socializing via Twitter, Facebook, etc. Wasting time when they ought to have been developing their minds by accessing the (written) works for politics, science, history, economics etc.  As soon as I listened to Huntsman for five minutes, after her first interruption of Sen. Sanders, I pegged her in this category of hyper-social networking twits.

The problem with the hyper-networked bunch is that they erect confected and artificial solipsist worlds in which all the things that bother and bore them are blocked out. In the case of Huntsman, it could well be that she simply didn't care enough to really learn why the Chained CPI is a terrible idea or why her generation isn't losing to us older farts, but rather both of our generations are losing out to the rich fuckers and the war mongering assholes. But her narative, that we (older folks on Social Security) are "taking from" her gen's mouths, and grabbing their jobs - while corporations sit on $1.7 trillion in capital - discloses she's in the same brain league as Kennedy.

Of course, this is exactly the strategy of the Neoliberal scumballs and parasites who are all about "divide and conquer". Regrettably, Abby Huntsman, by her obtuse reaction to Sen. Sanders, shows she's bought this hook, line and sinker. She actually believes in her heart of hearts that we old farts would rather her generation fall behind than that we miss out on our 'goodies' (Never mind Obama plans to cut them!)

Meanwhile, Abby's take on letting the Keystone XL pipeline go through was equally uninformed (adding 'Well, we all have to take risks, like when we walk across the street!' which had Maher falling out of his chair in a pseudo-mock demo) . Abby then  interjected  "bestiality" in a discussion of same sex marriage. One is left to wonder if she really got all those brains from dad, Jon Huntsman.

Sadly, if Facebook “friending”, texting, tweeting and video gaming is what defines a group's limited universe, then their overall education (which must exist beyond any classroom) will be a casualty. As author Bauerlein notes (p. 138):

"For education to happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine and conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity"


What that means, as he further observes, is one must move through and beyond the initial knee-jerk reaction: “I don’t get it! That’s not for me, not my cup of tea!”  Even if it's a blog on the chained CPI, or 'order and disorder' and evolution, or even complex numbers. At least make a minimal effort to learn.

Bauerlein again (ibid.):

“Nobody savors the process, but mature adults realize the benefits. Adolescents don’t and digital connections save them the labor of self-improvement…..the screen and cell bombard adolescents with youth trifles and the sporadic brush with challenging subjects that recall their shortcomings are quickly offset by a few minutes back in virtual comfort zones"

And – as the author warns, the “opportunity costs are high”. Imagine instead of wasting hours and days on pseudo-socializing (which I define in terms of digital contacts-communication, rather than face-to-face or the famous “bull sessions” such as we used to partake of in the 60s) the young adult pursued actual knowledge aims – learning the conjugation of Russian verbs, or Latin, or how to integrate around a pole using residue calculus, or …just learning about what’s transpiring now at the interface of politics and ecoomics, say in terms of financial implications of the sequester, or the history of the deficit and the debt ceiling.  Oh....and how U.S. taxes are at the lowest percentage of GDP in over a generation!


‘AWWWWWW……BOOOOOOOOORRRRRING!’

Well, yes, to the undeveloped and raw mind. But getting beyond that reaction is what molds and defines the adult. It is, if you will, the sine qua non rite of passage to adulthood in a civilization which generally foregoes such rites.

One hopes Abby Huntsman will learn and actually apply that next time she gets a prime time gig. Assuming she does get one! But given how often superficial looks get a pass in our  consumer, 24/7 Bimbo-Himbo corporate media culture, I wouldn't be surprised if her star rises even further after her just concluded 'brainiac' performance!

Woman Breaks Her Facebook Addiction: Maybe Everyone Should!

It was interesting reading about Sara Scribner's New Year's resolution to break off (and break out of) Facebook, which appears to have nearly 1 billion around the world enslaved in a never-ending social solipsist's merry-go-round. As Sara noted in her salon.com piece on her recent liberation:

"Two days after I’d made the New Year’s resolution to quit Facebook, I realized how much the site had been messing with my mind. Holding hands with my son, walking down a gritty urban street in downtown Los Angeles, I suddenly stepped out of myself and observed the way my innocent, sun-kissed 6-year-old contrasted with the steely greys of the streetscape around us."

She also recounts how the break elicited a similar dynamic seen in other addictions,

"And not even a week into this experiment, I already felt sunk. The suspicion that Facebook was satisfying a need I didn’t even know I had — training me for a certain kind of behavior — made me wonder if I needed a support group or something."

Possibly not a bad idea. In an earlier blog around 3 years ago I cited author Mark Bauerlein 's book (The Dumbest Generation), in which  he depressingly documents how the under-30 crowd in particular were foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves.  Bauerlein observed that 18-20 year olds especially loved digital social media because it “allows them to construct a reflexive surrounding.” While their boring job at Mickey D's maybe tires them and the college classroom with its droning profs irks them, their twittering, facebooking, Myspacing and video gaming “mirrors their own woes and fantasies, a pre-packaged representation of the world, a ‘Daily ME’”

Thus he noted, this single-minded attachment "contributed to an artificial solipsistic world filtered by the egocentric dispositions of the users."  Instead of being a channel of information and knowledge consolidation, the monitor screen becomes a mirror of the young users’ own limited selves and under-developed psyches.

The solipsist framework with its unmentioned rules for all who participated, enabled all the things that bothered and bored to be blocked out. The people they don’t know and don’t want to know (e.g. would never "friend")  they could exclude at the touch of key. A new bomb may have been developed by Iran, and an earthquake may have killed thousands in China, but in the case of Facebook users it’s the old monkey show: “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” .


A delimited reality is confected which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books (determined by the median frequency of rare or difficult words per 1000 – with print newspapers at the top with 68.3 and pre-school books at 16.3)

The entire mental superstructure was revealed in the words of one 16 year old girl quoted (p. 137-38) when asked by a journalist if she wasn’t worried that she was denied a broader picture. Her illuminating retort:
“I’m not trying to get a broader picture, I’m trying to get what I want”.

Out of the mouths of “babes”!

My point in the earlier blog is that we were  engendering a generation of über-dumpkopfs. This might not matter so much in the scheme of things for a nation, but when that nation's future depends on a majority knowing critical information, and also developing critical thinking skills, it can be catastrophic. As Bauerlein put it in respect to the popularity factor:

“At number one stood Facebook (78.1%) followed by MySpace (50.7%). Only 5% checked a blog or forum on politics, economics, law or policy”

This is sad bordering on pathetic. As Bauerlein noted, for real insight, education and the potential for critical thinking based on it to occur, "people must encounter worthwhile things outside their personal sphere of interest and brainpower."

That Facebook would insinuate itself into a life to the extent of excluding so much else is not surprising.  Scribner herself noted that while she first joined to share family photos it gradually descended into random, driven 'rummaging' and time wasting. As she put it:

"We know the pattern by now. That initial rush arrives with the first “like,” comment, or share. Then it becomes a habit. Instead of reading a book or the newspaper, I would troll through my friends’ pictures or comments, jumping from one stray, random idea to another. I was feeling fragmented, even a bit wasted, by the end of my daily FB journey."

Adding to the preceding are the encumbering social burdens,  a phenomenon of interjected -interlinked differing social milieus and often clashing personas that needed to be reconciled. As she describes it:

"I had to switch roles often on Facebook. Students at the school where I work would friend me, and then I would have to alter my comments. My boss friended me. Soon, I was jumping through a number of mental hoops, double-checking whether the “me” I broadcast was professional, upbeat, proper. It’s not easy to make all these projected selves cohere: My friends and family include folks from Southern evangelical Christianity, from the rap/rock critic subculture, from ’90s bohemia, from mommy-land, from the public-education universe. My guess is that most people on social media have some variation of this problem. In life, I entered each space separately; on Facebook, it all happened simultaneously."

And, of course, Sara notes the social -chasing, hierarchy -seeking downsides that elicit recall of  privileged circles in "junior high":

"Some people say that the Web takes everyone who uses it – regardless of age — back to a high-school mentality. But this experience vaulted me back to junior high, when a new girl, a queen bee, entered my group of more-or-less popular friends. She instantly turned them into a vicious pack of exclusionary vipers, seeking opportunities to create lower-caste members of the group and to make them taste the pain of rejection again and again."

The truth is that the Web is a marvelous place to gain richness of insight and educational ballast, if one knows where to go, and follows through. On the other hand, if one merely wraps oneself in a social cocoon of one's own making it can be hard to grow, or escape.

Fortunately, Sara Scribner was able to and the fact that she could do it shows perhaps anyone else can, if they set their mind to it!

NEWTOWN.....And the Disappearance of Childhood (2)

In his Chapter Seven ‘The Adult Child’, Neil Postman lays out a summary of his thesis on the disappearance of childhood in tandem with defining the modern conception of “adult” and what it has evolved (devolved?) into after the emergence of video culture. As he puts it, the modern idea of the adult “is largely a product of the printing press.” Further, almost all the attributes we associate with adulthood “are those either generated or amplified by a literary culture”. These include:


- A capacity for self-restraint

- A tolerance for delayed gratification

- A sophisticated ability to think sequentially and conceptually

- A preoccupation with both historical continuity and the future

- A high valuation of reason and hierarchical order


He then goes on to warn that as electronic (visual) media have assumed center stage “different attitudes and character traits come to be valued and a new, diminished definition of adulthood begins to emerge”. This new stunted version of the adult which reaches its apotheosis (nadir?) in the adult child has arrived with the television-video age which flattens out all differences between all ages. A typical observation by Postman (p. 101) serves to clarify and lead to a fuller exposition:


“Television redefines what is meant by ‘sound judgment’ by making it into an aesthetic rather than a logical matter. A barely literate ten year old can interpret and at least respond to the information “given off” by a (political) candidate as easily and quickly as a well-informed 50 year old."

As Exhibit A, look no further than the recent phenomenon of  4-year old Abigail Evans, about whose infantile election complaints much was made by our semi-inebriated, blow-dried media hacks who confused her bawling about “Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney” with how real adults interpreted their policies, and the polarizing arguments that ensued. Some in the media actually had the temerity to lead with crappola like: “We’re all Abigail Evans Now!” Uh, no we’re not, and if you think YOU are, Mr. Media Maven, you have more serious problems than can even be described by the latest Diagnostic and Statistics Manual.

But this media hyping is instructive because it eminently proves Postman’s point, that not only are: a) Children now the new “adults”, but symmetrically that (b) today’s adults are the new children, infantile, narcissistic and greedy as only ADULT children can be. Hence, a conflation exists such that childhood has essentially disappeared. I can’t cite every example and case that Postman does, but for anyone interested I suggest getting hold of his book, including his examples of how our corporate hyper-media sexualizes children in films, music and other areas. He notes this would have been unthinkable, for example, as recently as the “Little Rascals-Our Gang” era in the 1930s where teens and tweens were never seen wearing anything other than children’s clothing. And NO, in the 1930s you’d never ever catch a kid appearing as 12-year old Brooke Shields did in the 1978 Louis Malle-directed flick ‘Pretty Baby”. (One of several films he mentions (p.124), along with “Blue Lagoon”, “The Exorcist”, “Paper Moon”, “Carrie” and “The Omen”)


But what is it about video-TV culture that makes it so dangerous? The danger is twofold: 1) Television –video culture essentially opens the “barn door” and lets everything into the house without careful parsing or interpretation, and 2) TV does not call attention to ideas first but rather “atmospherics’, personalities and hot button emotional issues. This makes it almost impossible to have a sane political discussion, for example, in today’s TV sound bite venue.


Even worse, the presentation of TV news, in Postman’s calculations, amounts to a totally unbalanced retelling of the day’s top events without point of view or even import. Events reeled off from the TV anchors’ chairs end up as an endless stream of meaningless drivel. Postman details a typical night’s news viewing of WCBS on page 104, where he assays the time allotments as follows:


- 264 seconds for a story about bribery of public officials

- 40 seconds about Iran

- 22 seconds about Aeroflot

- 25 seconds about Muhammad Ali

- 53 seconds about a New Mexico Prison riot

- 174 seconds for an ‘in depth’ look at depression

- 18 seconds about Suzanne Sommers


As Postman puts it (ibid.):

“This way of defining the ‘news’ achieves two interesting effects. First, it makes it difficult to think about an event, and second, it makes it difficult to feel anything about an event. By thinking, I mean having the time and motivation to ask oneself: What is the meaning of such an event? What is its history? What are the reasons for it? How does it fit into what I know about the world? By feeling, I mean the normal human responses to murder, rape, fire, bribery and general mayhem”

Postman then goes on to make the point that the manner of presentation is such that events are presented without any historical continuity or other context, and in such rapid succession “they wash over our minds in an undifferentiated stream”. Postman’s other questions, observations are equally germane:

- What is the connection between Aeroflot and Suzanne Sommers?

- Why is Iran worth 40 seconds and the results of a basketball game 160?

- How is it determined that Suzanne Sommers gets less time than Muhammad Ali?


The effect of presenting a meaningless string of unrelated acts, events is that there is no sense of proportion to be discerned in the world. To quote Postman: “Events are entirely idiosyncratic; history is irrelevant.”

It is in this context that the aftermath of the Newtown slayings must be considered, and how the national media treated the young surviving victims. Because if events are ultimately “idiosyncratic” and can “just happen” while proportion is lacking in the presentation (so that feelings are also absent), then it means the media presenting the stories must create ersatz emotion where none would otherwise exist.

Thus, we saw in the wake of the Aurora shootings, microphones being shoved into the faces of victims while being asked “How do you FEEL?” How the hell do YOU think they felt, Mr. Media Hack? Thus we also, on Friday, beheld microphones shoved in the face of children who were psychologically victimized by the Sandy Hook killings.

Denver Post columnist Joanne Ostrow perhaps put it in the most salient terms (DPost, Dec. 16, p. 17A):

“Does it serve any journalistic purpose to put children on live television in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting? Is it ethically permissible to put shocked parents on live TV, to give the nation a taste of the horror? Clearly it serves no purpose other than titillation to put shocked, underage and vulnerable people on TV to give the nation a taste of the horror.”

 

Exactly, but more importantly, to invoke Postman’s thesis: this has to be done to fabricate ersatz emotion because the very nature of video news on a 24/7 cycle is to neutralize and flatten all emotional response. Beyond that, the constant emphasis on the horror can play havoc with young, impressionable minds ….i.e. those of KIDS!


It is for this reason, Dr. David Schonfeld, Director for the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital has warned parents across the country to be careful about letting children consume media coverage of the events. Or indulge in obsessing over the events via Twitter, where real time events take precedence.


The problem is that it may already be too late for any of this, since the genie has already escaped the bottle. The omnipresence of a video connection wherever one goes, as well as a web connection or camera phone, has assured none of us can now escape the ever-present video reality. The most we can hope to do is temper it, and use it judiciously – or try to – and that means being aware of its effects, including how the news cycle is also “dumbed down” and trivialized by the intermittent presence of commercials. To quote Postman one more time (p 106):

“The news, in a phrase, is not an adult world view. Otherwise we would not be shown four commercials celebrating the affluence of America, followed by the despair and degradation of prisoners in New Mexico.”

Even worse, is that the commercially-dominant idiom fuels private consumption and accelerates the turn into infantile, ‘me’ behavior. Benjamin Barber, author of ‘CONSUMED’ is clear on the connection to capitalist-market privatization and infantilism (p. 159):
 

“Examining the dynamics of privatization, as we have done, suggests that private relates to public as childish stands to the adult. Prioritizing the individual and rendering the community private in a way that makes it look like an aggregation of individual wants and needs is a puerile way to construct the social world.”

 

As I’ve shown before this also applies with particularly strong force to 2nd amendment fetishists of the type who uphold owning automatic weapons and multiple-capacity clips. They – including the automatic weapons aficionados in Newtown itself, have placed their own childish demands and needs ahead of community security.

And, of course, author Mark Bauerlein ('The Dumbest Generation'), has already shown how the social media obsession has infantilized the under-30 generation by enabling them to create virtual worlds, Facebook pages etc. that “mirrors their own woes and fantasies, a pre-packaged representation of the world, a ‘Daily ME’”

In other words, a solipsistic world of puerile narcissism. Bauerlein (p. 137) underscores this by citing a quote from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, purporting to reveal the secret of his site in terms of never having to “hear a dissenting word’:

“That’s kind of what we are doing here, but with ‘what’s going on in the world with these people I care about’. “

So, all the things that bother and bore them are blocked out. The people they don’t know and don’t want to know they can exclude at the touch of key. A new bomb may have been developed by Iran, and an earthquake may have killed thousands in China, but in the case of Facebook users it’s the old monkey show: “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” .

A delimited reality is confected which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books. Again, consolidating Neil Postman’s thesis that we’re all reverting to a conflated adult-child/ child adult society that likely will be unable to handle the next real mega-crisis.

By extension, the “news cycle” to which most of us are exposed, is infantilizing and regressive if it’s the only source from which we obtain our perspectives on the world. If don’t read widely, including newspapers, we will become the adult –children that Postman holds up to ridicule, the ones who inevitably end up in a Jerry Springer world, whether by choice or accident.

As for the children, as in Newtown and other places, one can only hope that their parents will now assure them some measure of genuine childhood as well as genuine security, and not thrust them too quickly into the adult scene ….including training them to fire automatic weapons and explode propane gas tanks at nearby “freelance” (unregulated)  ranges!

Calling all adults! Any? At all? We need you to show up and take responsibility! Not go out with your tyke firing rounds with automatic weapons at propane gas tanks!