Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'll try and find some free time to read you all tomorrow. Tonight I'm a bit tired, as I have had a long four-week-teaching English to teenagers, and I am moving to a new house.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! excuse me : eight weeks ! You can see how tired I am.
Glad someone brought it up! Lack of time. Everyone is on the run. Our pace has sped up. We don't have as much free time on our hands to sit on the porch or meet in the diner with like-minded buddies or neighbors--if we are fortunate to have them. Towns are spreading out into counties. Cities are oozing into the rural communities. People are everywhere but not really talking. They can't. They're too busy working and looking after family affairs. Intellectualism falls lower on their list of priorities. I spend a lot of time with freshmen and sophomore college students, all ages, and most are racing from a job, to school, to home, and back again. Whether they're working for extra money, or just working to pay the bills, these folk are busy doing whatever it is they think they have to do. They're driven. I, too, am on the run. I seldom have leisure time. So maybe this factors into it also. Materialism, sure. That's bound to be a part. But look where we are now. War time. And notice some of the lyrics coming out in progressive rock songs in very recent years--last 2-3. I feel a shift underway in the American mindset, but I don't think it's going to shift totally in the "wrong" direction. (growing dumber) We're also in the information age. People are acquiring knowledge differently than in the past. We are in major flux. Here in America and all over the world. (Which can be a bit unsettling if you've lived for a few decades and have watched some of this unfold.) More places on the Internet like sciforums would be good, I think. Discussion boards that appeal to all, or to only the young, or to only the older. More places for people to meet like- & unlike-minded people in this world to help keep the ideas flowing. They/we have time to hop on the computer for a half hour once or twice a day, or check in before bed. But no time to sit and chat for a spell with thought-provoking neighbors, to attend lectures, to study, to meet for group discussions or debate. Keep talking/posting and keep the ideas flowing. Those who are interested in starting new discussion boards, go for it, but make sure word gets around you're out there. Those who have friends or contacts in local areas, brainstorm over ways to bring more minds together. The open, hungry, willing minds are out there, but it's a crowded busy world. (Oh, and no charge for my input! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) Just for whatever it's worth... ~~~ Counterbalance
Counterbalance ... Not everyone. Pretty much my whole life I've been fortunate enough to avoid the proverbial 'rat race' by staying clear of corporate culture and leaving the 'big city', never looking back and seldom going back. Yes, there was a price to pay ... I never did get to purchase a Dino Ferrari, but I did buy a used Porsche Speedster and get to enjoy it for a good long while. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And, right now I can look out my front window and see the neighbor's cows grazing in the pasture across the road, hear the Canada geese starting to head South, and occasionally see a few deer in the back field. Never did make a world tour, but did cover a lot of territory on two wheels and was able to spend time in the S.W., 'on the rez' and meet some people who were still 'real' enough to feel lucky just to own a beat-up pickup ... and the hell with the make, so long as it ran. Sorry for running on, but I do think it can be done. Just have to be willing to pay the price.
True, Chagur, not everyone. That was a generalization on my part, but a true one, nonetheless. You are fortunate, indeed. I've also lived the "laid back" life, out of the rat race, beautiful vistas, days of peace spent in solitude, reflection, study and joy. The point I was making is that the "rat race" is the norm for most people and the pace of this race has quickened over the years. Now, however, I think we are on the brink of...many things. Those with the vision and ability to preserve what they value have the means to do so. They also have choices. And as you say, True words. ~~~ Counterbalance P.S. Always did enjoy a pick-up truck. No status symbols needed here.
I like the rat race. It lets me know I'm alive. Of course, I do place emphasis on being able to retreat from it once in awhile. Usually I meditate in a bubblebath for about an hour. It's like dropping into a pocket-dimension where nothing else matters but finding where the loofah went to. I drive a two-hour commute, and get in some meditation time there, too, but it's not as good as the bubblebath treatment. Maybe I'm not running. Maybe I'm just sort of jogging. Oh, Chagur? If you look to my avatar, you can see my cow grazing peacefully on my hard-drive. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I live in cow-country. Modesto. Mooooooodesto. Yeah. I go a little nuts out here in the sticks. Fortunately, it's building up a little. I just wish I could find decent pay around here so I wouldn't have to commute so far just to make ends meet.
Start your own company. Let others earn the money for you. Me and my partner, we are tired of the rat race. So we are hiring people who enjoy the rat race.....
The problem with starting my own company is that I have no capital to do it with. Sucks, huh? In order to make money, you have to have money. I had put my eye on the possibility of opening an Erik's Deli Cafe franchise here. They're pretty popular in San Jose and Santa Cruz, and I think one would go over big on Modesto, what with the "early days of American farming" theme to all of them. I can see it now: ME: Welcome to Erik's Deli Cafe. What kind of sandwich would you like? We've got the Pot-bellied Broiler, the Barn Buster, the REO Speedwagon... FARMER: Nope. Ain't hungry at all. Ah jes' needs to borrow this here calf-weaner. (He helps himself to a piece of decor.) I'll have it back to you in a few days. Seriously, I had looked into it in earnest. I just couldn't come up with the money right now. I'm still repairing my ravaged credit report. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I have lived in the country before. It's pretty and all, but for me it's more of a vacation place. I need to be in the thick of things. I find the world to be too interesting to seclude myself. Bright lights, black leather, big city. That's my idea of heaven.
As long as one is happy...that is all that matters....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Babelina? Is your life really so miserable that you have to degrade yourself by doing something as insane as posing as another person? Have you no self? You have no right to use my avatar and my url:s and pretending to be me.
I commiserate with you Oort. However, I can't think of a time in human history when the masses did accept intellectualism. Prior to modern times they had their hands full with the daily challenges of survival. The church spoke for their few remaining free hours. Besides, freely thinking aloud in those days could easily get one killed. The world has changed for the better. In North America and Western Europe, it's now child's play to earn enough for a good life. Most of us now have the freedom to choose between making yet more money, or having more time to apply towards the intellectual pursuits. The people have voted overwhelmingly with their feet! The vast majority prefers to exchange the precious hours of their lives for mere baubles. Occasionally, youth movements rise up to ask for something different for their lives. Sadly and invariably, these movements fade back into the background noise of getting and having. I'm nearly finished with a thoroughly depressing book on this very subject, The Twilight of American Culture, by Morris Berman. Berman rips serially into the advertising industry, the suburban mall culture, American Universities, the entertainment industry, the political machine, etc. He's preaching to the choir in my case. But he has an interesting recommendation of how renegade individuals might best fight against "McWorld". He councils concerned individuals to follow the lead of the Irish monks of the Middle Ages. He asks us to collect and preserve culture for the future, for a time after the present madness has passed by. In contrast to the monks, he asks that we actually try to understand what we are preserving for the future, rather than just transcribing and illuminating jumbles of meaningless symbols. While he makes any number of excellent points in his book, I don't accept his premise that the intellectual quality of this world is sinking into the abyss. Berman is recoiling from an up-close study of the unwashed masses. But I wouldn't have thought to gauge human intellectual health from observations of the masses, anymore than "I may not evaluate the condition of modern poetry by inspecting the contents of greeting cards" (S. J. Singer) The health of an intellectual and artistic period may be judged primarily by the quality of the finest intellects and artists produced during that period. We don't judge the quality of art during the Renaissance by, for example, a sign unearthed outside Bruno's wine tavern from 15th century Firenza. We rightfully judge it by the works of Botticelli and Michelangelo, among many others. I have to scramble to read even a small sampling of the many excellent books in print these days. Certainly there is no end of worthless muck on the shelves as well, but that has always been the case. I have no fear for the intellectual health of our world today. These are wonderful times in which to be alive. The masses: Let them have their theme parks, their Hollywood blockbuster action films, their television, their fast food, and their huge piles of money. This only indicates that the masses now have the means to indulge their kitsch tastes. Let stand, what passes for happiness amongst them. A ubiquitous vulgar behavior only simplifies the task of men and women of quality to identify one another. Bermen writes, "Civilization is impossible without a hierarchy of quality". He also claims to respond with a "Thank you", to the label of elitist. Slightly off topic: Berman blasts the current "postmodernist" movement, which in my opinion promotes the "absence of values" to a virtue. A value judgement in the eyes of a radical postmodernist only serves to reveal one's own nasty prejudices and bigotry. Goodbye to critical thinking. All knowledge and qualitative judgement is of equal, and equally useless value. The central concepts of postmodernism might be summed up with an expression of a single word, now passe, but formerly beloved by the masses: Whatever! By the way, I recently came across a nice definition by Albert Camus, "An intellectual is one whose mind watches over itself". Don't let the "McMasses" wear you down Oort. Best Wishes, Michael
Reverse is Also True There's snobbery of both materializm and non-meterializm, and I agree with whoever said it's just a symptom of something wrong in their own lives when people try to put you down. It's against the rules to post an idea you've already posted someplace else in these forums, so if you want a really new and different theory, see my post in the Calvinists thread. I guarantee it'll surprise you. If anyone saw Lifetime's movie Monday night, "Video Voyeurism", and checked LifetimeTV.com's forum, you'll see we have all kinds of new trends, and laws haven't kept up. Only 5 states have laws protecting us from a neighbor or whatever putting cameras in our attacks. The perpetrator had to leave town, although he wasn't really punished, we learned from posters afterwards.
What you're saying is painfully obvious to me. And that state of mind is nothing but new. The consequences of the intellectual drowsiness of our civilisations were best prophetised, I think, by Ray Bradbury in his novel Farenheit 451. Despise of books, menathing threats of a global war... And now he's alive, seeing his novel slowly come true. *shudder*
