Connection?

There's no humor here, but there might be an explanation of the mind-set that could allow one person to commit such an atrocity. The technology of broadcasting your thoughts, as illustrated by your blogger in this blog, for example, might be a reason that we are self-absorbed, that we disregard the best proven teachings of the culture.

We are so, so, "whatever".

But we are NOT faithful to the culture.

It's always "what my BFF said" or "what MC Gangstapunk rapped", but it's never "what Thomas Aquinas said" or "what John Locke said", is it?

We have shrugged off the brilliant minds who built our superior culture, and replaced them with..."Whatever".

The technology, or rather the abuse of it, did that to us.

I'm NOT going to say "reject the technology", because it is the same technology that enables us to carry the entire brilliant works of the culture on one pocket-sized device, so this same technology which gives rise to unfathomable evil can also save us from that evil.

It can only save us, though, if we choose to use it for navigation on that path. If we choose to use it to simply divert our minds from the ennui of having to live too close to one another, we have failed to realize the primary strength of the technology.

Whatever.

H/T to Country Gal, who I should probably promote to "bff"

 

Comments

[Rivrsis]

Don't underestimate movies as a culprit. I had a pretty "classical" education, learning the great mythologies of Western culture (and some of those from other cultures). These stories informed educated people for centuries; viz. Shakespeare. But they are hardly taught to children here any more, and are not part of the lingua franca, in the U.S. at least. Instead, people refer to movies. I'm not a movie watcher. I often don't get the references or have to infer them without having seen the film. I personally don't find most of the zeitgeist of film to have the depth of mythology, crazy as mythology is. So, there's a big paradigm shift (let's see if I can get the word "parse" in here, too) in the underlying stories that make up the fundamentals of a culture.