Apr 7, 2025 07:01 PM
A question provoking some thought as a whole array of possibilities comes to mind. But overall, in my estimation, the greatest threat to our species is simply universal indifference. It is the trend seen even in our own time towards a complete lack of interest or concern about anything, having much to do with our being constantly bombarded and jerked around by this thing and that.
While electronic media has served us well in its providing us instantaneous light speed awareness of events and ideas, it also has reinforced the role of ourselves as the detached spectator, never really involved with what we are experiencing but instead feeding on a mental diet of mass-produced factoids and cliches and images and opinions.
This subtle depersonalization of our consciousness by what is average and commonplace and always elsewhere creates the illusion over time that nothing is really important because everything is newsworthy. The only standard for importance is if it can be talked and opined about. We lose any vested interest in anything happening eventually--one trite thing followed by another in an endlessly recycling sideshow of soundbytes and talking points and sensationalist headlines.
Doomed to a zombie existence of brain-numbing repetition and passively-consumed force-fed hype, nothing involves us anymore because nothing CAN involve us. Apathy becomes the inevitable result, lives trapped in the illusion that nothing really matters and nothing will ever matter.
Defy the System! Shake off this pandemic of ennui. Focus on things that matter to you. The ideas and stories and news and art that impassion you and make you feel alive!
“The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.” The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.”
― Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
While electronic media has served us well in its providing us instantaneous light speed awareness of events and ideas, it also has reinforced the role of ourselves as the detached spectator, never really involved with what we are experiencing but instead feeding on a mental diet of mass-produced factoids and cliches and images and opinions.
This subtle depersonalization of our consciousness by what is average and commonplace and always elsewhere creates the illusion over time that nothing is really important because everything is newsworthy. The only standard for importance is if it can be talked and opined about. We lose any vested interest in anything happening eventually--one trite thing followed by another in an endlessly recycling sideshow of soundbytes and talking points and sensationalist headlines.
Doomed to a zombie existence of brain-numbing repetition and passively-consumed force-fed hype, nothing involves us anymore because nothing CAN involve us. Apathy becomes the inevitable result, lives trapped in the illusion that nothing really matters and nothing will ever matter.
Defy the System! Shake off this pandemic of ennui. Focus on things that matter to you. The ideas and stories and news and art that impassion you and make you feel alive!
“The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.” The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.”
― Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle