So, what's Mr. Comeau's problem with this? Is it that he's a conservative prude? He disclaims any such thing. Is it that he does not find any of the videos amusing? Not at all - he admits that "the part of me that can't help but laugh at the "Harlem Shake" struggles with the part of me that doesn't want to be entertained by all this." So, what's his concern then? Referencing an earlier post of his, "The Bull Market in Narcissism", he expresses his concern that we increasingly live in an age that values attention more than "true creativity and accomplishment." In his earlier work, quoted in the newer, he worries that:
Every generation of youth gets told it's worse than the last, but the rise of social media exhibitionism is a brand-new phenomena. If you wanted to get attention when I was a teenager, you had to go out in the real world and do it in person, which at least required something resembling courage....These days, if you want to get a reaction from the outside world, you can do it without getting out of bed.
I think he is right to express this concern.
Mr. Comeau joins a grand tradition of social commentators who have noticed a steady loss of highbrow culture in favor of the moment, of which social meadia is the very avatar. Others in this grand tradition have include:
Neil Postman, author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" who stated in its introduction that:
Neil Postman, author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" who stated in its introduction that:
As Huxley remarked in _Brave New World Revisited_, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In _1984_, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In _Brave New World_, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right
Christopher Lasch, who noted in his work "The Culture of Narcissim" (1991) when referencing other cultural critics and sociologists that:
"They fail to explore any of the character traits associated with pathological narcissism, which in less extreme form appear in such profusion in the everyday life of our age:
[1.] dependence on vicarious warmth provided by others combined with fear of dependence
[2.] a sense of inner emptiness
[3.] a boundless repressed rage
[4.] and unsatisfied oral cravings. Nor do they discuss what might be called secondary characteristics of narcissism:
[5.] pseudo self-insight
[6.] calculating seductiveness
[7.] nervous, self-deprecating humor.
They thus deprive themselves of any basis on which to make connections between the narcissistic personality type and certain characteristic patterns of contemporary culture, such as the
[8.] intense fear of old age and death
[9.] altered sense of time
[10.] fascination with celebrity
[11.] fear of competition
[12.] deteriorating relations between men and women."
Alan Bloom, who painted the following in "Closing of the American Mind" (1987) that (and his tech references are a bit dated, of course):
Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.Jean Twenge, author of several books discussing the narcissism of the present generation, setting forth in one of her books:
The cultural focus on self-admiration began with the shift toward focusing on the individual in the 1970s, documented in Tom Wolfe’s article on “The Me Decade” in 1976 and Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. In the three decades since, narcissism has grown in ways these authors never could have imagined. The fight for the greater good of the 1960s became looking out for number one by the 1980s. Parenting became more indulgent, celebrity worship grew, and reality TV became a showcase of narcissistic people. The Internet brought useful technology but also the possibility of instant fame and a “look at me!” mentality. Using botulinum toxin to smooth facial wrinkles to perpetuate a youthful fact birthed a huge industry. The easy accessibility of credit allowed people to look better off financially than they actually were.and in another book:
No parent ever says ‘my goal is to raise a narcissistic kid.’ It’s part of this overall individualistic culture. It comes from the ‘good intentions’ of trying to develop self esteem, from the cultural pressures of uniqueness and standing out.
Emphasizing specialness, uniqueness and standing out so much does tend to create that situation where we’re focusing on that, we’re focusing on being better [than others] and standing out.”Alan Wolfe, who noted in a brief WSJ post on blogs that:
One by one, Marshall McLuhan's wackiest-seeming predictions come true. Forty years ago, he said that modern communications technology would turn the young into tribal primitives who pay attention not to objective "news" reports but only to what the drums say, i.e., rumors. And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that way.The last is not so far off your thoughts on "attention", is it, Mr. Comeau?
Contrast your ideas on art and YouTube with this quote from "Art and Scholasticism" by Jacques Maritain:
The work of art has been thought before being made, it has been kneaded and prepared, formed, brooded over, ripened in a mind before passing into matter. And in matter it will always retain the color and savor of the spirit. Its formal element, what constitutes it in its species and makes it what it is, is its being ruled by the intellect. If this formal element diminishes ever so little, to the same extent the reality of art vanishes. The work to be made is only the matter of art, its form is undeviating reason. Recta ratio factibilium: let us say, in order to try to translate this Aristotelian and Scholastic definition, that art is the undeviating determination of works to be made.YouTube is the narcissist in artistic action. Expressive only of self, not of art, taking no work, little pain, short periods of time, and certainly, little brooding. Try not to be cranky, Mr. Comeau - though, I have been trying for years, and it always seems to catch up with me.
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