NOT-SO-GREAT
EXPECTATIONS
I'll get no argument
when I say that we’re slammed with a daily tsunami of choices, staggering
amounts of information that pour over us in a wide range of formats. We have
access to almost every movie, piece of music, magazine, and book in the world.
It’s an exciting time to live but one filled with trivialities vying for our
attention, distractions, dead ends, and many, many things that should be an
insult to our collective intelligence. We all need some sort of a filter, or at
least I do. I definitely need a filter to insure that I spend my time with
things worthy of an adult mind. Things worthy of an adult mind do not include
that video you posted on Facebook of your uncle getting hit in the crotch with
a football.
In Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood one character refuses to read any book written in the last 25 years to shield himself from the glare of vulgar popular opinion. This is an interesting concept but I had to read a 250 page book I didn’t think very highly of to find it. See what I mean about needing a filter? We would have more time to write the great American novel if we weren’t spending so much time reading mediocre novels. And then there are all of the tech trends that rob us of our valuable free time.
We probably just need to lower our expectations. Instead of that masterpiece of music, film, literature, or science we dreamed of a few years ago we need to set our sights a little lower. Not there, a lot lower. We still have room for a lot of creativity but without being too ambitious. Think of War and Peace reduced to a 140 character Tweet which would mean that the Cliff Notes would be about 50 characters for those of you who are too busy to read the original. And 140 character communications not being brief enough, the supremacy of Twitter is being challenged by a new tech upstart with a messaging system that limits users to a single vulgar noise. Seriously Twitter, 140 characters? Who has that kind of time?
In Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood one character refuses to read any book written in the last 25 years to shield himself from the glare of vulgar popular opinion. This is an interesting concept but I had to read a 250 page book I didn’t think very highly of to find it. See what I mean about needing a filter? We would have more time to write the great American novel if we weren’t spending so much time reading mediocre novels. And then there are all of the tech trends that rob us of our valuable free time.
We probably just need to lower our expectations. Instead of that masterpiece of music, film, literature, or science we dreamed of a few years ago we need to set our sights a little lower. Not there, a lot lower. We still have room for a lot of creativity but without being too ambitious. Think of War and Peace reduced to a 140 character Tweet which would mean that the Cliff Notes would be about 50 characters for those of you who are too busy to read the original. And 140 character communications not being brief enough, the supremacy of Twitter is being challenged by a new tech upstart with a messaging system that limits users to a single vulgar noise. Seriously Twitter, 140 characters? Who has that kind of time?
We now live in an age in
which more young people have selfie sticks than library cards. I don’t know if
this is true but if it is then there really is no hope for us as a species.
“Selfie” is short for “selfish” or “solipsistic” which is a philosophy that the
self is the only existent thing. “I think, therefore I am” in our era can be
replaced with “Hey everyone, look at me!”
Workers spend something
like 81 days a year on emails alone. Just think what it would be like to do
away with this terrible waste and spend all of that time looking at cute cat
videos or posting Facebook pictures of your food. Imagine a world in which we
needn’t even get out of bed in the morning because we can just watch the big
screen while eating a pint of ice cream. Living in the Information Age is
exhausting so it makes sense never to get out of bed.
