The honest truth is that this book is making me scared of who I am. I’m blogging right now because I’m only 23 pages into the book and have stopped reading and started thinking about other things probably about 100 times. It’s true what he says…”our minds become a theater of the absurd, and we become shockproof.” I’ve been reading this book so far and it is reminding me of those people who stand up on the big stones outside the UVM library and preach about their ideals. I tune those people out. I have become shock proof to hearing about the crimes against the world. Today, it is like everything is killing us and I have been able to tune it out as just more “noise.” One can get cancer from everything, and I have been desensitized to this just as I have been desensitized to seeing starving children and rape scenes on the television.
I also concur that I have a general malaise about life. I would rather watch something on television that I don’t really want to watch than sit with my own thoughts in silence. Maybe I do tune out the noise but I seem to need the noise to function. The sad thing is that it seems irreversible. I think this because while reading the short 23 pages that I have read so far, I have malaise about this book. I tune out and then have to re-read whole paragraphs and feel like it is all the same - media is rotting our brains and our worlds (well no shit) and then I have this period where I want to watch television instead of reading more about how my life is incomplete because I fit the consumer this book is talking about completely.
Made it to page 39. I did not drift off as much because this section read like a story. I can picture the author reading letters from big corporations rejecting his ideas, (his sitting at a table) and then a cut out and a fade in to a scene of him as a child remembering what it was like to not be able to speak out against the government and then another cut/fade back in to him at the table, growing increasingly angry and then flying off the office to make more flyers about saving the environment to send all over America…or something like that.
The point is that the injustices that are being put on people that want to do something good for people and the environment are real, but unless they are presented to me like a story that I can envision like a movie, I don’t really think about it.
Now on page 50. I did not get distracted at all by reading about the people whose lives were so consumed with media that they didn’t shower for four days. Earlier I was having the general malaise about how our world is coming to an end (en d of the mind that is), but now I’m reading about how other people’s individual lives are coming to an end and I’m interested and judgmental. I’m critiquing how I think they should live their lives in my head even though I was dying to stop reading and start watching television only 20 minutes ago.
I realize now that I have learned to drone out people who are telling me that there is something wrong with me and that I need to either change or buy a product to help me change. However, if I’m reading about how media is ruining someone else’s life, I can instantly make connections to my own life and realize what I need to change. I’ve droned out the advice of others to the point where I have to make all the connections “myself” or I at least need to think that I’m making them myself.
When the book tells you all the things that are bad about the media it’s like hearing the same old crap about the media and life and blah blah blah. However, when it tells you the story about someone who will literally drift away from anything that is bad including websites, television shows, colleagues and marriages, it makes you stop and wonder how you should change your life so that you don’t end up like that.
Finally finished. I am feeling a little detached from the messages presented. I feel as though I feel happy for most of the time, so I feel that the book is portraying a world that I don’t live in. Is most of the world living in a state of never ending spending and unhappiness? Am I actually unhappy and I don’t even realize it? Is this book just like an ad, convincing you that something is wrong with you?
Nice post Torie! Great questions at the end... we'll see as we continue through the book. I loved following your thinking as you described your musings on Lasn's assertions. I appreciated your honesty throughout. Really fascinating when you talk about being better able to connect with the story when you can imagine it as a movie, complete with fade in/outs, etc. Is that the result of growing up on media?
ReplyDelete