Yer too much, U [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
How Dumb Can You Get?: Are Young Readers Dead?
Thu, 2008-08-21 06:28
#52
Thu, 2008-08-21 06:50
#53
Yeah, I read Stan Persky's article (though not the obviously right-wing tract he is reviewing by Bauerlein). Despite his critique of the worst excesses of Bauerlein, Persky replicates them in soft form.
I don't enjoy long nonfiction treatises (very few are worth the length) and have often wondered why books can't be 20 or 30 pages long - with an option to buy more chapters if such be the need. Maybe the publishing industry can't handle it. Maybe some authors are too insecure or downright unable to present a thesis in short form and invite readers to go further. Persky's nostalgia about "browsing" in stacks of old books is a sign that he hasn't considered that problem.
No, magazine serialization is not the solution. I'm not buying a magazine (worse still, subscribing) to read one instalment when the rest doesn't interest me. Online availability is the answer, IMO, and distribution and popularization means must be developed to focus on that. If publishers can't make enough money that way, then too bad, resign yourselves to losing money by not selling books.
One more point: Nancy Pelosi? Who gives a steaming f*** about her? She came to power on ugly illusions that a Democratic Congress would end the war. Many of us here ridiculed that notion well in advance (as we now ridicule in advance the notion - to which Persky seems partly hostage - that Obama signifies something or other positive). Well, we all know what happened. Nancy Pelosi is a bit player suckholing G.W. Bush. Why would we care whether U.S. youth know her name?
By the way, do you know the name of the Speaker of the House of Commons? How about the Senate? Maybe you do. But please don't tut-tut when our vibrant, healthy, forward-looking, and fundamentally progressive and revolutionary young people don't.
Thu, 2008-08-21 07:01
#54
Nice one, unionist. I groaned and laughed at the same time.
quote:
As for bourgeois interest in high culture, it is emphatic. Cultural capital, like Milton, Shakespeare, The New Yorker, is essential to the capitalist project that privileges such art above working-class pleasures like hardboiled detective fiction. I know you are a fan of Chandler, so I'm sure you'll agree that the music found in the pages of The Big Sleep is of a quality with any modernist literature. Yet when Chandler was promoted from the pulp of Black Mask to the gloss of The Smart Set, there was all kinds of bourgeois pride mucking about. It's interesting that you don't see the connection between 'high art' and the bourgeoisie. I could suggest a couple of titles...
I'd be interested in those titles, if it isn't too much trouble.
I don't think the bourgeois mentality appreciates what you call "high art" for its artistic value (a hard thing to quantify), but rather as a commodity to be consumed. Once the art has been digested the consumer can say, "Look at me, I have culture."
quote:
I know you are a fan of Chandler, so I'm sure you'll agree that the music found in the pages of The Big Sleep is of a quality with any modernist literature.
How could you remember this? I can barely tell anyone apart on these web forums, never mind remembering what each individual says.
Anyway, I don't think Chandler is "of a quality" with modernist literature; he sticks a gat in modernist literature's ribs and blows huge holes in it.
quote:
But please don't tut-tut when our vibrant, healthy, forward-looking, and fundamentally progressive and revolutionary young people don't.
Sometimes I'm in awe of the attitudes of some of the kids I encounter, and wonder why 30 years ago I couldn't have had my act together like they do.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 07:12
#55
You may remember that the June, 04 election was largely an exercise in electoral bellyaching. "Lower taxes and revenge against those who misuse taxes and against a bloated bureaucracy that feeds off those taxes - that's what this national election is revolving around," I wrote in a community editorial board column.
Toronto Star columnists Carol Goar worried about it, and Antonia Zerbisias called it a media that "distracts with trivia, just to better the bottom line".
I wondered "If, as an Ipsos-Reid poll found, only 11 per cent of the citizenry aged 18 to 29 could name the leader of the official opposition on the eve of the election, what percentage might be able to say what the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights could mean for the future of women wanting to end their pregnancy, for instance? Who is most likely to benefit from a general ignorance of such details?
When Winston CHurchill observed that democracy was the worst of governing systems, 'except for all the others', he could not have reckoned with a citizenry reduced to this level of understanding. Or did he?
And did only one in five of the twentysomethings in his time bother to vote?
It took a world war to usher in voting rights for women and another to bring some security to the notion of universal democratic rights.
For what?
The'informed citizen' may now be an informed taxpayer (only). For neoconservatism, this was the key to electoral success, first exploited by the late Ronald Reagan."
And this "electoral" concern is the concern of Jacoby and Gore, esoteric concerns about what the bourgeosie are reading, aside.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 08:13
#56
Almost by definition a social development will affect younger people more than older people. To point out some negative historical developments (consequences of the development of capitalism), then, will likely involve pointing out how younger people are affected. That doesn't make it an "attack on youth"!
But apparently we are liberals and can only say that everything is getting better and better - certainly nothing can be getting worse!
Thu, 2008-08-21 08:23
#57
Catchfire
quote:
[b]Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:[/b]
I'd be interested in those titles, if it isn't too much trouble.I don't think the bourgeois mentality appreciates what you call "high art" for its artistic value (a hard thing to quantify), but rather as a commodity to be consumed. Once the art has been digested the consumer can say, "Look at me, I have culture."
This is exactly what I was trying to say, which is why I put scare quotes around 'high art'. I was obviously being facetious, and was called on it, but if you want to slog through social criticism, the two big texts are Pierre Bourdieu's [i]Distinction[/i], where he articulates the idea of a cultural economy and cultural capital in exactly the terms you've mentioned, and Theodor Adorno's famous [url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm]'Culture Industry'[/url] essay in [i]Dialectics of Enlightenment[/i], which is mostly a diatribe against mass culture, but I think he reserves a special kind of criticism for films, music and literature that [i]pretends[/i] to be intellectual or challenging, but is really just the same old crap.
Anyway, it's this kind of dynamic that I see at work in someone who gasps and faints at the lack of kids reading Edmund Wilson. Not to discredit Wilson, whom I haven't read, I think, but anytime you privilege a certain stock of writers over another, you are creating a value system that will necessarily exclude certain portions of the population--be it ethnic groups, working-class groups, women, etc. So when I hear people like Persky or Bauerlein (or Sven Birkerts, or Neil Postman, or E.M. Forster, or...) talk about how technology is taking something from us that we need to recover--well, I wouldn't say I ignore them, but it does make you question their motives and social position.
ETA:
quote:
[b]Originally posted by RosaL:[/b]
Almost by definition a social development will affect younger people more than older people. To point out some negative historical developments (consequences of the development of capitalism), then, will likely involve pointing out how younger people are affected. That doesn't make it an "attack on youth"!But apparently we are liberals and can only say that everything is getting better and better - certainly nothing can be getting worse!
I agree with this too...it's always important to look how technology is part and parcel of the capitalist project. But for me, the object is to take the good things from such technologies--the capacity for consensus, interconnectivity and participatory democracy--and separate it from the bad: narcotizing mass culture, dissolving individual agency and increased concession of liberties to the state. It is also regressive to think that there is nothing the internet has to offer us.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 08:31
#58
quote:
Originally posted by RosaL:
[b]To point out some negative historical developments (consequences of the development of capitalism), then, will likely involve pointing out how younger people are affected. [/b]
Example, please?
To be clear, I need an example of a development which has tangibly made young people today (say, under 25) stupider or crasser or more reactionary or less humanitarian or less environmentally conscious or more warmongering or generally worse-informed than the 26-50 group. Or pick any other demographic slice that suits you.
Thu, 2008-08-21 09:37
#59
The cynics among us and the politically correct post-modernists have ensured that youth do not turn out in any number at the polls.
(The cynic)
You know the literary type with language like "who gives a steaming f*** about her" or the same politician simply "suckholing" to Bush.
The politically correct)
Catchfire:
Anyway, it's this kind of dynamic that I see at work in someone who gasps and faints at the lack of kids reading Edmund Wilson. Not to discredit Wilson, whom I haven't read, I think, but anytime you privilege a certain stock of writers over another, you are creating a value system that will necessarily exclude certain portions of the population--be it ethnic groups, working-class groups, women, etc. So when I hear people like Persky or Bauerlein (or Sven Birkerts, or Neil Postman, or E.M. Forster, or...) talk about how technology is taking something from us that we need to recover--well, I wouldn't say I ignore them, but it does make you question their motives and social position.
George Victor: Obviously degenerates read Wilson (the most famous of America's literary critics in mid-20th Century).
And now, for the third time, the reason why Wilson the degenerate is even mentioned by me:
That "now-arcane" reference to To the Finland Station was occasioned by the appearance of Wilson's name in the article. But one could suggest that anyone discussing politics who has not read that work, is at a disadvantage. And their fulminations tend to show that. No history. No depth. Talk "through their hat".
i.e....the printing press as a "tool of democracy", was actually born in China and helped to promote reaction. In Europe it was the "tool" of the protestant church, and resulted in creation of schools so that the kids could read the bible, and thus also became "tools" of the teachers...
If you spend a couple of years in a Grade Two classroom, you realize the amazing potential for change that exists in our younger generation. But somewhere between Grade two and the age of majority, teachers, parents, friends, significant others (particularly significant through the teen years), the media, technology and events have combined to create concerned individuals, but with nowhere to take their concerns.
Because they've been taught not to trust liberal democracy's institutions with all of their contradictions. So they escape. Do their own thing. Remain a great potential force for good.
Please excuse this aside on children, but the innuendo was becoming hard to take.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:10
#60
Before I answer the question on how dumb current readers are, do I get any lifelines?
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:16
#61
Frustrated Mess
quote:
Originally posted by Bookish Agrarian:
[b]Please refrain from putting words in my mouth, it is bad manners if nothing else.I fail to see the connection between your list and my post, or in the supposed problem of young people are not alright. If you want to explain how this perennial complaint, which I pointed out dates back to at least the 1800s in my personal experience, is responsible for everything from poor nutrition to envrionmental damage I would be fascinated to see it.[/b]
I didn't put words in your mouth. If I did they would have been based on actually reading the article.
It is rather embarrassing that the reviewer very carefully says that the book is not a case of "the 'old fogy' tag" and yet so many babblers fall into that trap.
We have one babbler who thinks that pop-culture is toxic when it comes to porn but is completely innocent when it comes to the minds of the young who eat the intellectual fast food, heavily dosed with porn, glorified violence, and subservient and traditional sexual roles for women, is perfectly fine otherwise. Why his niece can find a dead white guy on Google.
What pains me in this entire discussion is that we live in a dumbed down society. There are entire classes of people out there who take pride in never having voted and just aren't interested. There are hordes of people who believed and still believe Iraq had weapons of WMD. We need informed and public debates on issues of climate change and public policy.
Many babblers will agree we live in a dumbed down society. But when this is documented for one segment of our culture, everyone pooh-poohs the findings, without being able to counter them.
It is like fighting alcoholism. There is a denial of the problem.
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:20
#62
We always have lived in a dumbed down society.
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:20
#63
Frustrated Mess
Perhaps, but I don't think we've always lived in a society as dumb as the current one. But let's say you are right. Let's say we have always lived in a dumbed down society, are you suggesting that is just the way it is and we should accept it? Are you suggesting we can't help but raise narcissistic little creeps and we shouldn't try otherwise? Are you suggesting our culture always has and always will provide pap for the masses?
Because, if so, then what is the value of rabble.ca, protest, activism, or even academia? Why shouldn't we just accept we are a bunch of irredeemable morons, vote Harper, if at all, and turn on American Idol while sucking back Bud hoping for a party of comely lasses to emerge in the living room?
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:32
#64
quote:
We have one babbler who thinks that pop-culture is toxic when it comes to porn but is completely innocent when it comes to the minds of the young who eat the intellectual fast food, heavily dosed with porn, glorified violence, and subservient and traditional sexual roles for women, is perfectly fine otherwise.
I have never intimated that pop culture was "totally innocent"; my point is that blaming youths and the Internet is taking on the wrong target.
But if you are ready to take at face value the reviewer's preventive strike against anyone identifying Bauerlein's rhetoric as that of an "old fog(e)y", well, I can understand your frustration at our refusing to fall in line.
"Narcissistic little creeps"??? I am calling ageism.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 13:34
#65
Frustrated Mess
quote:
I have never intimated that pop culture was "totally innocent"; my point is that blaming youths and the Internet is taking on the wrong target.
Actually that was not your point. If it were, we might have had something to talk about. Your point was to belittle the study as though it were groundless. You made a comment,
quote:
I don't know: I have never read as much and consulted as many sources than I do today at my computer screen. Perhaps, Bauerlein and Bloom should look over those sophomores' shoulders and check whether it's strictly e-mails and Facebook they are engrossed in... The book's subtitle "Don't trust anyone under 30" is probably indicative of the depth of an analysis that haphazardly smears youths to get at a real problem: the underfunding of libraries. If anything, computers and DVD players have brought more people into libraries than ever before.
, indicating you hadn't even read the posted review.
quote:
"Narcissistic little creeps"??? I am calling ageism.
Of course you are. Because an "ism" is always the handiest thing in place of a good argument.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 14:20
#66
Catchfire
I'm sorry, George, I'm having trouble following your line of argument here...is it the Internet's fault that people are cynical? I think you do discredit to some of the great cynics throughout the ages, starting with Socrates. Your argument about the printing press seems to support my line of thinking, in that technology offers us nothing newer than we've seen before.
And I defy you to find an age where young people were more interested in politics than they are today. You can't do it.
I think your argument about postmodernism is imprecise, but I don't disagree with the sentiment. Except this kind of ideology has always been in place to keep people from voting, from being active, from seeking revolution. It's just taken on different avatars throughout the ages.
Thu, 2008-08-21 15:51
#67
Is it my printing that gives you difficulty in understanding my message, Catch"? The first two paragraphs read:
The cynics among us and the politically correct post-modernists have ensured that youth do not turn out in any number at the polls.
(The cynic)
You know the literary type with language like "who gives a steaming f*** about her" or the same politician simply "suckholing" to Bush.
You're probably not good at irony or sarcasm, eh?
At least you are not still agonizing about someone who has the temerity to read that probably nasty Wilson, whoever he is, but you know what some people will read, and you have to wonder about them, their social standing etc. That was the stuff of gossip columns.
And surely only the unexamined life was not worth living for the fella whose honesty got him wasted. No sign of cynicism there. It was ageism that got him into trouble, some say. Principles.
------------------------------------------------
(quote)
And I defy you to find an age where young people were more interested in politics than they are today. You can't do it.
Hell, if you can point to a decade in the past where the turnout of youth at the polls was lower than the last two times up federally, I'll take it all back.
What you are talking about is a model of Homo sapiens who is infinitely flexible and able to handle any new technology, even from a tender age, and it's all good.
There is certainly "good" in being able to communicate - and learn - from someone on the other side of the Earth.
But I think that Martin's niece is in deep dung if an adult doesn't come along and point out what can happen to the impressionable mind reading Kierkegaard without guidance.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 15:54
#68
To me the claim of the original post seems obviously true.
Books can stretch over a few hundred pages, and therefore have the luxury of exploring background information and counterarguments. When people surf the web they typically have several windows open, msn, they click refresh on lots of things et cetera. There was a recent study where it was found some office workers check their email 40 times an hour. How can that not be a distraction which reduces concentration?
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]And I defy you to find an age where young people were more interested in politics than they are today. You can't do it.[/b]
Such counterarguments are so weak it's ridiculous.
Quantitative information is simply not available to be continuously plotted over extended history, and even if it were there would be many variables.
Sure many generations have looked down on their successors. That doesn't mean they were all wrong on all counts, though that is what the point seeks to imply.
Thu, 2008-08-21 16:09
#69
quote:
George Victor intoned: "Martin's niece is in deep dung if an adult doesn't come along and point out what can happen to the impressionable mind reading Kierkegaard without guidance."
No adult came along to steer me wherever when I read him at her age and here I am, all pluck and in your virtual face...
Thu, 2008-08-21 16:16
#70
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Hell, if you can point to a decade in the past where the turnout of youth at the polls was lower than the last two times up federally, I'll take it all back.[/b]
You must be old enough to recall that youth under 21 weren't even allowed to vote federally before 1974.
As for the last two elections, explain to me the most obvious and striking platform differences between the largest parties.
The youth of this land are far wiser and less supercilious than your comments in this thread.
I read, in fact devoured, Edmund Wilson as a teenager. But I've moved on. Consider it.
Thu, 2008-08-21 16:42
#71
We obviously use books in different ways, u. To the Finland Station is part of my reference collection.
I believe you have "moved on" in the sense that you no longer subscribe to the ideas that that work contains.
We've both moved on, then. But pity the folks out there that have no idea where those ideas came from. The kids.
Or doesn't that matter, either, to someone who's been there, and the next generations are just to make it up as they go, so to speak?
I believe the 20 per cent who go to the polls understand what "citizen" means. I'm not sure what virtues you would celebrate, in some political sense, and I've been really curious, lately, to know.
How about it? Elucidate, mate.
-------------------
Oh, and there's three decades between 1974 and the 2004 election. Pick any election year in between to compare youth turnout.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 16:47
#72
Martin, I'm damn sure you did not read only Kierkegaard, and you did not wear costume to tell your immediate world who you were.
Right? Read it again. I said what "can" happen. You survived. But it's more a crapshoot now.
And that is the difference.
Thu, 2008-08-21 18:22
#73
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Oh, and there's three decades between 1974 and the 2004 election. Pick any election year in between to compare youth turnout.[/b]
I don't consider high election turnouts as a positive phenomenon in themselves. As I've already suggested, disengagement from electoral politics may well stem from the disengagement of the political parties from the feelings and concerns of the people; from their hypocrisy; from their cynical abandonment of principle; and so on.
You think low turnout stems from something that the youth are doing differently from before?
Tell me about how the youth voted in 1979, or 1984, or 1988, or three Liberal terms thereafter. What erudition and involvement was displayed that is absent now? Or take any previous election. What are you actually saying here?
quote:
[b]I believe you have "moved on" in the sense that you no longer subscribe to the ideas that that work contains. [/b]
You are mistaken. [i]Mikol melamdai hiskalti[/i], said Solomon - "I have acquired wisdom from [b]all[/b] who taught me".
quote:
[b]Or doesn't that matter, either, to someone who's been there, and the next generations are just to make it up as they go, so to speak?[/b]
Show me that they will do worse than their predecessors. They will learn their way, as we did ours, by taking the wrong paths to enlightenment. As Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry."
quote:
[b]I believe the 20 per cent who go to the polls understand what "citizen" means.[/b]
Really. Let's agree to disagree.
quote:
[b]I'm not sure what virtues you would celebrate, in some political sense, and I've been really curious, lately, to know.[/b]
Curiosity, skepticism, solidarity, collective thought and action, self-denial, indignation over injustice, unconditional love of humanity.
Thu, 2008-08-21 18:40
#74
I'm not sure what virtues you would celebrate, in some political sense, and I've been really curious, lately, to know.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curiosity, skepticism, solidarity, collective thought and action, self-denial, indignation over injustice, unconditional love of humanity.
-------------------------------------------------
All of which I heartily subscribe to. But aren't you missing the polity that ties it all together in society? You know, the Greeks? Or are you imagining some process of osmosis to make it all gel?
And isn't your model of Homo sapiens just a bit of a new creation, the true loner riding up to do battle with the bad guys? Sort of a variation on John Wayne (well, maybe not the collectivist part)
Friedrich Nietzsche saw everywhere weakness, what was "human, all too human". His is the diametrical opposite of your perspective, u. In fact, one could say that your "ideas" stand in direct confrontation to his.
But you have to place your human model in some sort of working social arrangement. Beyond the kibbutz. And again, I don't see it in your reply to the question.
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Thu, 2008-08-21 18:48
#75
George, I'm not sure how you interpreted my answer in individualist or heroic terms. Those are the virtues I encounter and encourage in the workplace, and more broadly in the trade union movement - as well as other social movements in which I participate. They are "working social arrangements", with obvious flaws and limitations stemming from the nature of our economic system.
Federal and provincial governments and legislative assemblies, on the other hand, are not working arrangements. They are just obvious flaws.
Thu, 2008-08-21 18:54
#76
Can't get in to add that, of course, Homer had his heroes saving the day. But his followers understood that after the drama comes the reality, how to divvy up the land that was the spoils of war, etc.
Thu, 2008-08-21 18:59
#77
Federal and provincial governments and legislative assemblies, on the other hand, are not working arrangements. They are just obvious flaws.
-------------------------------------------
Flaws in what? That's what I'd dearly like to know. Your ideas on government, please. Of course all is flawed now. And if you look around you wonder what is keeping it together.
But what should replace the flawed whatever?
Thu, 2008-08-21 19:07
#78
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Your ideas on government, please. Of course all is flawed now. And if you look around you wonder what is keeping it together.But what should replace the flawed whatever?[/b]
Don't take this the wrong way, George, but in tribute to the thread topic, and to my deeply held beliefs, my serious and sincere answer to your question is this:
[b]Ask some young people what they think.[/b]
[i]Mikol melamdai hiskalti.[/i]
Thu, 2008-08-21 19:22
#79
And from the mouths of babes.....
Ok u. Looks like the best I can do in trying to extract your thoughts.
But that still leaves you with the advantage in future of the guy with the best poker face at the table. [img]cool.gif" border="0[/img]
Thu, 2008-08-21 19:29
#80
[img]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/15/22823903_744e8a6925.jpg" "width=250[/img]
Thu, 2008-08-21 19:45
#81
George Victor, walking further on the plank:
"Martin, I'm damn sure you did not read only Kierkegaard,"
Non sequitur. Of course I didn't, and neither does my niece.
"and you did not wear costume to tell your immediate world who you were.
Right?"
Valiant guess but...BLAAAAT!... wrong, blusterbreath. There were quite a variety of costumes being worn in rotation during MY late sixties... I fondly recall the pink djellaba, the caracul pantsuit, the WWI leather helmet, the dayglo-ed longjohns...
[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 01:34
#82
Catchfire
Sorry, George, I didn't realize you were insulting me. I regret the error.
I said I wasn't sure if I had read anything by Wilson or not, but I have read his contemporary critics, R.L. Leavis, Lionel Trilling, T.S. Eliot, etc. So I certainly don't think that there is nothing worth reading in Wilson, or in older writers and texts. In fact, you will probably be hard pressed to find someone else on babble who supports it as much as I do.
You called me a 'politically correct post-modernist', who, if not directly responsible, is at least 'ensuring' that 'youth do not turn out in any number at the polls'. I suggested that you were doing a disservice to cynics throughout the ages, and put too much emphasis on the apathy of the current age. Well here is another contemporary of Edmund Wilson, H.L. Mencken, talking about his choices in the 1920 Presidential election, between the Republican Harding and the Democrat Cox:
quote:
It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, [b]it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life.[/b] He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. [b]There is room for two sorts of them—first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox.[/b]
--"Bayard vs. Lionheart” in the [i]Baltimore Evening Sun[/i], July 26, 1920.
Fri, 2008-08-22 02:31
#83
I haven't read any of them. Sorry my dick is so small. But I grew up before the internet, you know, so I guess I'm at a disadvantage.
P.S. Oh wait, I have read some Kierkegaard, but only because I had to in philosophy classes in university. Clearly you can't be anybody if you haven't read dead white guys in philosophy classes in university. So I did that. But I waited until AFTER the internet was invented before I went to university.
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 04:04
#84
Maysie
The dead white guy canon is sooooo 20th century. [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
Fri, 2008-08-22 04:16
#85
And now kids have the wisdom of the ages at their fingertips...
If you spend a couple of years in a Grade Two classroom, you realize the amazing potential for change that exists in our younger generation. But somewhere between Grade two and the age of majority, teachers, parents, friends, significant others (particularly significant through the teen years), the media, technology and events have combined to create concerned individuals, but with nowhere to take their concerns.
Because they've been taught not to trust liberal democracy's institutions with all of their contradictions. So they escape. Do their own thing. Remain a great potential force for good.
------------------------------------------------
I'll certainly be asking some "turned on" types (as they were once described) about their thoughts on the turned off, this Saturday in Guelph.
Real world and alive.
We environmentally concerned and activist types "demand" those conditions.
Fri, 2008-08-22 04:41
#86
Catchfire
The internet and cyberspace are as real as anything else the world has to offer. Touch it. Feel it. It's real. Realer than what passes for electoral politics these days, anyway.
Will be meeting your 'turned on' types on a fishing boat in the gulf stream? Or will you be meeting them in a cabin near Walden pond?
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 04:53
#87
Maysie
There seem to be two opposing, but somehow related camps: Either young people are in big trouble, they aren't learning the classics, their style of dress is atrocious, what hope is there for the future??!? (Cue crashing chaotic music)
Or, young people are our future, they are so full of potential, they are the hope that anyone older than (25? 30? 45? 50?) pins our aspirations on, as if we can't do anything from our positions. (Cue "I believe the Children are our Future")
Horsefeathers.
The first time I noticed this BS was when I was a recent non-teenager, and all the "oh the teenagers!" handwringing was no longer directed at me. But I still identified with the powerlessness of most young people, and the blame foisted on them, they who CAN'T VOTE, seemed out of whack.
And I never stopped noticing (and many babblers have said it already), that young people have historically been talked about in this way. This tells us more about adulthood, lack of empathy, and pass-the-buckism than it does about any particular demographic of youth.
And none of the fuss over what the teenagers are up to ever focussed on stuff the grownups could take care of that would actually benefit and affect youth, like, oh I don't know, eliminating poverty, lowering tuition fees, building affordable housing, removing systems of oppression from schools, etc.
I never studied world history, I never studied world geography, I suffered through the DWGC (tm) in "philosophy" class in undergrad and assumed all the great thinkers were DWGs. When I graduated from high school I recall hearing of great despair that the young people entering university didn't know how to write a sentence, and hadn't been taught grammar (they were correct, I hadn't been taught grammar in high school). I learned grammar from being a voracious reader (which is about my privilege) and having university-educated parents (ditto).
I graduated from high school in 1985, over 20 years ago. Of course, way before the internet and spellcheck.
[Crabby voice]
When I was young, the spellcheck was "Open the dictionary and look it up!"
[/Crabby voice]
[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
Are young readers dead? I don't think so. But this conversation is more about what is knowledge, and how what is knowledge changes over time.
As for learning from history, why should today's young people be any better at it than the rest of us? [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
Fri, 2008-08-22 05:15
#88
My post:
I'll certainly be asking some "turned on" types (as they were once described) about their thoughts on the turned off, this Saturday in Guelph.
------------------------------------------------
Catch's post:
Will be meeting your 'turned on' types on a fishing boat in the gulf stream? Or will you be meeting them in a cabin near Walden pond?
------------------------------------------------
Okay, it can't be the way I phrase things.
Some suggest that too much time spent hunched over a monitor also causes difficulty in processing what is read.
And I only fish streams with barbless hooks today. Quick release.
Visited Walden Pond on my way toward a Cape Cod honeymoon, way back when. It is a water reservoir, and was stocked with fish back then. Nothing else to recommend it.
Fri, 2008-08-22 05:32
#89
Are young readers dead? I don't think so. But this conversation is more about what is knowledge, and how what is knowledge changes over time.
As for learning from history, why should today's young people be any better at it than the rest of us?
(end quote)
I guess my main concern, bigcity, is for the assumption that just throwing "opportunity" at the young of our species, is going to take us out of the dilemma so precisely spelled out by FM, way back in this thread.
I only jest at my Luddite inclinations. The internet's potential for education and reform is enormous.
The unfortunate title for this thread causes a defensive response, and that has skewed much of the discussion as to the effect of IT (as opposed to books) in the learning process.
Young people should indeed by better at learning history. But the neo-cons of Big Mike's time reduced the required history courses from two to one. That was not accidental. That is the neo-con perspective at work.
It should not have been accepted, but I'm afraid the level of political consciousness in Ontario had already sunk to an abysmal level under the weight of simpler messages, like appeals for lower taxes.
Fri, 2008-08-22 06:16
#90
Maysie
George, The thread title is taken from the title of the article.
In terms of my little joke about history, don't you think those of us who have lived history are in, if not the best, then certainly a significant, position to take on the activism and memory associated with that history? What's the responsibility of adults, former youth, to activism and knowledge?
For example, in 1972 when my sister was born in Lachine, Quebec where my family lived, my mother asked to have her tubes tied. As a married woman she needed the permission of her husband, who refused. Two years later, he agreed, and she got her tubes tied in 1974. 1974!!! All the media hoopla about how radical feminism changed the world forever during the 70s? Baloney. Yes gains were made, and they aren't to be dismissed, but much more remained, to be undone years later, again, by the activism of women. And this is just one example.
(I realize I'm drifting all over the place)
(Oh, George, please learn to use the quote function. Type [ quote ] before the quoted text and [ / quote ] after it (without spaces). Makes everything much more readable.
Fri, 2008-08-22 07:17
#91
quote:
Originally posted by bigcitygal:
[b] All the media hoopla about how radical feminism changed the world forever during the 70s? Baloney. Yes gains were made, and they aren't to be dismissed, but much more remained, to be undone years later, again, by the activism of women.[/b]
And in Lachine, as throughout Quйbec, trial juries were male only - until [b][i]1970[/i][/b].
Funny how the tonnes of books allegedly consumed by earlier generations of youth weren't enough to teach them that women should not be treated like subhumans.
Funny how Canadian youth marched off to be slaughtered (67,000) or wounded (173,000) in World War One, what with all the mountains of books they and their parents and grandparents read. Too stupid to even figure out why they were dying.
Shall I go on?
Today's youth are smarter, wiser, more progressive, more socially conscious, less racist, less sexist, less homophobic, less ghettoized, more intermarried, more curious, less money-grubbing, less chauvinist, than at any time in history.
You want them to read the same books their idiot forerunners read? You want them to study "history" which misinterprets the past of humanity, of Canada, of the world, in accordance with someone's current political agenda?
No thanks.
Fri, 2008-08-22 08:03
#92
The young "Quiet Revolutionaries" of Quebec began reading for reward, soon as Duplessis died, as I recall. At least that is what they told me their kids would be doing. That was the winter of '59-60.
Reading books became a sign of entry into the emerging middle class soon after the Second World War (Jacoby), and accounted for societal breakthroughs like the election of Jack Kennedy, the acceptance of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and challenges to the status quo.
Women of Quebec were the last of their sex to benefit from universal sufferage in Canada. I'd say a lot of invidious comparisons were being made by Quebec women as a result of being allowed to read dangerous works like Maclean's, etc.
Don't go lop-sided in gleaning evidence for yer argument, u.
------------------------------------------
(quote)
Funny how Canadian youth marched off to be slaughtered (67,000) or wounded (173,000) in World War One, what with all the mountains of books they and their parents and grandparents read. Too stupid to even figure out why they were dying.
---------------------------------------------
The Canadian farm boy didn't read a helluva lot, as John Kenneth Galbraith told us in The Scotch. And probably like me old dad in England, food came first.
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 08:08
#93
N.Beltov
quote:
unionist: I don't enjoy long nonfiction treatises (very few are worth the length) and [b]have often wondered why books can't be 20 or 30 pages long - with an option to buy more chapters if such be the need.[/b] Maybe the publishing industry can't handle it. Maybe some authors are too insecure or downright unable to present a thesis in short form and invite readers to go further. Persky's nostalgia about "browsing" in stacks of old books is a sign that he hasn't considered that problem.
Maybe it's less profitable. In any case, this is an interesting observation. Here's some more thought in that direction.
Soviet era publications went through a radical change in the Gorbachev era. Suddenly, anything interesting was in the form of a shorter 20 or 30 page pamphlet or periodical. The longer texts were uninteresting and boring as hell, mainly because they were more self-censored than Gorbachev-era publications.
Another example.
Back in high school, as Plate Tectonics became more and more accepted, I found that my Earth Science class also consisted more and more of short articles from Scientific American and other periodicals rather than from textbooks. Ths may have had to do with the budget for text books and the conservative tendencies among science teachers with regard to text book selection.
When there are new ideas (Perestroika, Plate Tectonics to use my examples) the form in which the new ideas are presented seems to change. It's a question of getting the new information to the readers.
But perhaps there is more to that than meets the eye. The medium is [i]part of getting across[/i] the (new) message. And the message is embedded in the "new" medium.
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 08:20
#94
Maysie
Salute to Marshall McLuhan by The Radio Free Vestibules
(audio)
[url=http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/downloads/ballad_of_marshall_mcluhan.mp3]mp3 file[/url]
Very funny!
Fri, 2008-08-22 08:37
#95
N.Beltov
Yea, it's sorta strange that McLuhan isn't mentioned more often in regard to the effect and significance of the new technology on our culture. Maybe we just take him for granted or something.
Oh, and thanks to al-Qa'bong for the interesting spelling of [i]boojwah[/i]. Very amusing. Despite the claims of Ellen M. Wood that the term is used improperly, I don't really see the harm in using it as a general term to describe (the dominant) culture under capitalism ... and using the term helpfully reminds us that every culture is associated with a particular elite or social class that sets the broad parameters and act as gate-keepers.
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]
Fri, 2008-08-22 09:13
#96
Of course, it was Harold Innes (Empire and Communications) that did the original work.
Marshall applied it quite well to the current conditions.
Fri, 2008-08-22 09:25
#97
M. Spector
a.k.a. Harold Innis.
Fri, 2008-08-22 10:15
#98
Yup. My son goes to his college. He sucks up all sorts of media, including large quantities of books, which draws him to the internet, which leads him to other media, which suggests things he might read about, which takes him to the library, etc.. My daughter's not much different, except maybe for a more interactive social life. I have always spent a good deal of my time around young people, happen to quite like them, and am optimistic.
Fri, 2008-08-22 11:15
#99
Frustrated Mess
So everything's hunky-dory, the sky is blue, and all is right with the world as seen through the mindlessness of consumer capitalist culture. So why are you here? Why are any of us? You could be taking in MTV and reading all about Paris' latest exploits in the National Enquirer. Do you know which celebrities are too thin?
quote:
There seem to be two opposing, but somehow related camps: Either young people are in big trouble, they aren't learning the classics, their style of dress is atrocious, what hope is there for the future??!? (Cue crashing chaotic music)Or, young people are our future, they are so full of potential, they are the hope that anyone older than (25? 30? 45? 50?) pins our aspirations on, as if we can't do anything from our positions. (Cue "I believe the Children are our Future")
Sorry, BCG, but that's a big load of crap also known as a false dichotomy. It isn't about fashion, nor is it about the classics. It is about the consumption of mass consumer pop-culture. The very same mass culture pop-culture that provides a narrative that most of here supposedly object too. Until we're confronted with it at which time we all pull -u-turns and rise to the defense of it.
Fri, 2008-08-22 11:21
#100
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Don't go lop-sided in gleaning evidence for yer argument, u.[/b]
Let's dwell on your argument. I'm not the one making the thesis that youth are dumb, illiterate, and poor citizens of our polity.
Here's what I asked RosaL above:
quote:
To be clear, I need an example of a development which has tangibly made young people today (say, under 25) stupider or crasser or more reactionary or less humanitarian or less environmentally conscious or more warmongering or generally worse-informed than the 26-50 group. Or pick any other demographic slice that suits you.
I'm still waiting.
Fri, 2008-08-22 11:38
#101
Frustrated Mess
quote:
To be clear, I need an example of a development which has tangibly made young people today (say, under 25) stupider or crasser or more reactionary or less humanitarian or less environmentally conscious or more warmongering or generally worse-informed than the 26-50 group. Or pick any other demographic slice that suits you.
Sorry, Unionist, that is a bit below you.
You are looking for a single, solitary piece of evidence? Prove categorically that climate change will adversely affect weather or that smoking will cause cancer?
Especially we are speaking about social dynamics that are harder to measure.
And, yet, the author being reviewed did manage to amass a fair amount of data.
If there is anything disappointing about the book, based on the review, is that it deals only with young people. That is somewhat unfair as it the phenomenon affects all ages so far as I am concerned and, gee, I'm not alone:
quote:
At least, you may think to yourself, we are not getting any dumber. But by some measures we are. Young people by many measures know less today than young people forty years ago. And their news habits are worse. Newspaper reading went out in the sixties along with the Hula Hoop. Just 20% of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 read a daily paper. And that isn't saying much. There's no way of knowing what part of the paper they're reading. It is likelier to encompass the comics and a quick glance at the front page than dense stories about Somalia or the budget.They aren't watching the cable news shows either. The average age of CNN's audience is sixty. And they surely are not watching the network news shows, which attract mainly the Depends generation. Nor are they using the Internet in large numbers to surf for news. Only 11% say that they regularly click on news web pages. (Yes, many young people watch Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. A survey in 2007 by the Pew Research Center found that 54% of the viewers of The Daily Show score in the "high knowledge" news category -- about the same as the viewers of the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News.)
Compared with Americans generally -- and this isn't saying much, given their low level of interest in the news -- young people are the least informed of any age cohort save possibly for those confined to nursing homes. In fact, the young are so indifferent to newspapers that they single-handedly are responsible for the dismally low newspaper readership rates that are bandied about.
In earlier generations -- in the 1950s, for example -- young people read newspapers and digested the news at rates similar to those of the general population. Nothing indicates that the current generation of young people will suddenly begin following the news when they turn 35 or 40. [b]Indeed, half a century of studies suggest that most people who do not pick up the news habit in their twenties probably never will[/b].
[url=http://www.alternet.org/democracy/90161/?page=3]Ignorant America (and Canada, too!)[/url]
[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]