Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name, if not in the text, at least in a laudatory note: whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents. But an attention fixed on the main theme or various matter of the book would deliver us from that slavish subjection to our own self-importance. And I had the mighty volume of the world before me. Nay, I had the struggling action of a myriad lives around me, each single life as dear to itself as mine to me. Was there no escape here from this stupidity of a murmuring self-occupation?
George Eliot - Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)
We now have that mighty volume of the world before us, it’s the internet. In George Eliot’s day it was books, libraries, experience, an enquiring mind and the time and resources to nurture that enquiring mind.
Was there no escape here from this stupidity of a murmuring self-occupation?
Some escape and some don’t and the division isn’t new. Nobody has to join the internet, they can play with it instead, entertain themselves, imagine they are what they are not. Yet perhaps the division is much sharper and far less likely to be a matter of social class than it was in George Eliot‘s day.
The division has become more familiar too - we constantly see the stupidity of a murmuring self-occupation portrayed in the shallow media as a Good Thing. We see it in celebrity culture, politics, fashionable science, sport and the arts.
Just be yourself
You are who you want to be
Own who you are
We have always seen this type of invitation to indulge in the stupidity of a murmuring self-occupation, but now we have dropped the murmuring in favour of something much louder and far more visible. It all goes to make the division deeper.
Yet having that mighty volume of the world before us does appear to have raised a previously unknown problem for Those Who Know Best. They don’t know best and too many of us know they don’t.
3 comments:
Immediately I saw your headline, I thought it was all about Emily Thornbury...!
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, 1859:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
But nowadays the idea of a fixed outcome has been undermined. Not altogether a bad thing because some of what was 'writ' was rubbish, but a fixed place to stand was worthwhile.
Now is you don't like something there's someone, somewhere on the internet, who will propagandise a more acceptable view. Failing that - there's an app for your distress.
Scrobs - I didn't think of that possibility, don't want a misleading headline so I'd better scrap that post about barrage balloons.
Anon - "there's someone, somewhere on the internet, who will propagandise a more acceptable view"
Yes, one of the problems of the internet in that using it often requires some searching and checking before a view is accepted. Yesterday I glanced through a couple of pieces claiming that Tesla is introducing aluminium graphite batteries this year, but further checking suggests not, it's probably hype.
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