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Coronavirus Playlist

#1,101
"At dinner parties he likes to launch a topic - "What is the best form of government?" - rather than making small talk. Or he asks people questions until they get irritated. He complains: "There is a coldness in English social life. No one reveals anything, says anything that is in any way naked, vulnerable, interesting, honest, and that does frustrate me."

Alain de Botton.

"The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

George Orwell - The Freedom of the Press.

The Freedom of the Press | The Orwell Foundation
 
#1,104
Lagado said:
Amusing Ourselves to Death …
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I know you've posted some insights from Postman already. I must read that book, on the strength of this alone,
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 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. …

All The Things You Never Even Knew You Wanted To Know About Neil Postman
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Lagado said:
… I enjoyed it, that's what I got from it.
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Me too. When Alain was here, during the launch of his associated material, we got a glimpse here, thanks to auntie. I love it when people, people like him, think a little deeper, apply themselves, and then, reach out and peddle a few of the good ideas that flow on from all that effort. Not impossible, our challenges, and sometimes the fruits are very rewarding. Here he goes again, sharing insights into the generation of more therapeutic sorts of news. Exploring the archetypal stories we keep telling ourselves, over and over again, and the potential reasons why, must be a great and beneficial line of reasoning.

Bias and the Beeb is a subject well worth exploring too — with you there — and yet Adam Curtis gets a guernsey under the BBC banner. We're lucky to have him in the mix.

In the same breath, she, old auntie, keeps heralding 'the news you need to know,' and, all the while presenting only a select, somewhat blinkered portion of that spectrum of our needs. She's not the worst offender, it has to be said.

Sport plays a very distracting role, no matter where one cares to look. All of this is revelatory, the many pratfalls, seen through the gaze of De Botton, Postman and their like.

I find it hard to be overtly critical of Alain, but he too has his sore points, biases. We think our way beyond all of this or we languish and pay a terrible price for our stagnation. This is the eternal struggle, nothing new(s). The song remains the same. But, we are learning.

Alain's focus on the contextually proportioned popularization of the story in the frame is brilliant — how we actually wound up getting the message across, historically. Arguably, it may also, at times, be at the root of the problem. Some stories are probably better left untold.

This particular presentation, at the Wheeler Centre, is the one that I stumbled upon, initially. He has another one, at least, online, like his Opera House adventure, but there he's perhaps a bit too manic. Here, he's more relaxed and more on song,




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#1,107
"Irrational attitudes of submission to authority." See. Now there's the point. D Botton's bias is biased against the man you fracture consenting that this man has gone off the rails. As a sportsman, I can respect both policies but I have my awarenesses, and my scars and can make some educated guesses on the strength of that. And "You can always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal. Clap hands."

I remember seeing that on the idiot box, in the nineties, no net. And I took quite a fall :)
 
#1,111
Tom Bomb said:
Bias and the Beeb is a subject well worth exploring too — with you there — and yet Adam Curtis gets a guernsey under the BBC banner. We're lucky to have him in the mix.
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I have the feeling he has a couple of friends there. Take 'HyperNormalisaion', his last piece of work. The budget was a paltry £30,000, and it was released straight to iPlayer. With that kind of exposure, he could drop out of sight and no one much would notice. So why keep him on? It puzzles me a little. But there could be another reason; to maintain a lie, it serves to tell the right amount of truth. In this case, very quietly.

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#1,113
Tom Bomb said:
"Irrational attitudes of submission to authority." See. Now there's the point. D Botton's bias is biased against the man you fracture consenting that this man has gone off the rails. As a sportsman, I can respect both policies but I have my awarenesses, and my scars and can make some educated guesses on the strength of that. And "You can always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal. Clap hands."

I remember seeing that on the idiot box, in the nineties, no net. And I took quite a fall
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"What is serious about excitement is that so many of its forms are destructive. It is destructive in those who cannot resist excess in alcohol or gambling. It is destructive when it takes the form of mob violence. And above all it is destructive when it leads to war. It is so deep a need that it will find harmful outlets of this kind unless innocent outlets are at hand. There are such innocent outlets at present in sport, and in politics so long as it is kept within constitutional bounds. But these are not sufficient, especially as the kind of politics that is most exciting is also the kind that does most harm. Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few and rabbits are many, I watched a whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the skillful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits. But in London or New York some other means must be found to gratify primitive impulse. I think every big town should contain artificial waterfalls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person found advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters. More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement. Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought."

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950

I think Russell was a little naïve as to how much the game would be commodified. But he does have a point. I like watching the skill, the inventiveness, the strategies, the same as the next man but I've never supported a team. In my mind, the better team should win. That can be a bit awkward when you're watching with friends sometime. I smile at the appropriate moments.

Things that are popular, will be considered a market, and they will change with the influence of that. They get polluted.

I remember those halcyon days of yore, when things were far more innocent, the beautiful game:



:D
 
#1,116
Lagado said:
Things don't resemble their original anymore to a large extent. That was where Orwell was right, the meaning of words would be changed. And people would accept that 2+2=5, unwittingly...
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Driving a Holden that's serviced using Toyota parts and workshop manual, I have no idea where you're coming from there. 2+2 = mathematics. I think I'll pass.
 
#1,119
Tom Bomb said:
I may have just had an accident … :wacky:
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"The Nova was sold and marketed under the Holden nameplate, although it was a badge engineered version of the Toyota Corolla, with barely any input from General Motors, although they referred to it as the GM S platform. However it received minor stylistic changes. The Nova was sold only as a four-door sedan and five-door hatchback."

Holden Nova - Wikipedia
 

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