Monday 3 October 2022
Big Drivel
I lived upon words, and believed in phantoms.
Ivan Turgenev – Rudin (1856)
Online browsing can be an extremely enlightening thing to do. It may even be too enlightening, easily creating a sense of disenchantment, a sense that we are too absurd to survive. At other times it offers sane voices, new insights with a warm and welcome sense that all is well and sanity must surely prevail.
Yet online drivel is so easy to find that it is not easy to avoid. It leaves behind a sense that we must read at least some drivel to understand drivel culture, where it comes from and what sustains it. We need to do that because Big Drivel rules the world. It spews out seductive verbal formulae which are obviously formulae and obviously drivel, but easy to remember, easy to adopt and they come in various wrappers to give them mass appeal.
Most of us probably know that we are not particularly original in our ideas. The words we use, the arguments we make or the ideas we pursue are from being entirely original. It’s what politicians continually make use of – our general lack of originality. Online browsing tells us so and tells us that it works. Many people lack the originality to be sceptical. Political parties are not interested in people who are habitually sceptical anyway - how could they be?
The political classes cannot deal in ideas which appeal to sceptics, so they bypass them with simple and seductive verbal formulae. It doesn’t matter if the verbal formulae are dubious or outright drivel as long as they are simple, appear to be optional and have enough authority for mass appeal.
It also helps if political verbal formulae do not persuade sceptics, who are routinely portrayed as off-piste. Nice folk don’t wish to be off-piste for a number of reasons, all of which are exploited politically.
We already know this. We know how easy it is to adopt verbal formulae instead of pursuing the rocky paths of investigation and analysis. Verbal formulae save time, cut down mental effort, save energy and come with added virtue-signalling. Sceptics can’t match that.
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4 comments:
The Top 10 ways of recognising Drivel...
I'm original and sceptical. In general I have been shunned by the mainstream for being so, whether socially or in the workplace. Of course the reaction to me has often been mockery and the laughter of disbelief. Any one like me can easily be laughed at as an eccentric mad person so that I can easily be dismissively immersed in the 'nut case' collective.
Subjects I've been laughed at over my opinions.
1) Relations between young men and women
2) Music and art
3) The biological growth of hair
4) The prevalence of genetic determinism in intelligence and human behaviour.
5) The positive aspects of racism.
6) The support of Margaret Thatcher.
7) The necessity for discipline in schools.
8) The support for Brexit.
I do not read on if I encounter the following:
1. You know, folks, ...
2. Zombie
3. Special relationship
4. American dream
5. Neo-nazi
6. Far right
7. Kick start/super charge/turbo charge (said of an economy)
8. Sir Tony Blair
9. The great British public (in fact, the great British anything)
10. Any journalism written in the future tense.
There are more where those came from.
DJ - there appear to be more than 10. I suspect that some people are innately sceptical while others are not and sceptics have their own filters to filter out the drivel.
Tammly - I tone down scepticism in social situations because people don't want to hear it. Being dismissed for it is an aspect of the drivel - there is no depth to it.
dearieme - a good list and I'm sure there are more. Sustainable, green anything, EV, wind turbine, BBC, Guardian, gender, cis, trans - it could end up being a huge list.
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