Recently, I have been really sick and have not been able to do too much—well, really I have been able to do almost nothing. So, I have basically spent time sleeping, listening to my mp3 player (Tolstoy is awesome), and watching TV. I really feel like I have been living in a cave.
From this I have seen a lot of trouble coming down the pipe. I am going to give you a few notes in the next few blog posts concerning my experiences in the cave and why you should be worried—very worried—I’m afraid.
Note #1: Culture is over!
Here is a brief reason why the world is broken and cannot be fixed—it all hinges on cable TV. For most of history, culture passed from parents to children. It was passed by people working together, living together, and by stories (great stories) being passed down to children. People traveled little, worked hard, and for many life was hard. Still, culture existed. Somewhere along line, we threw off the old stories—at least most did. They still listened to the Scriptures and the old stories even though these stories stopped organizing and guiding culture. There was still commonality amongst people. The living close to the ground in most cases and in human sized (i.e., smaller) communities—even within large cities. The Industrial Revolution and technology fixed a number of problems, but during that time forces were loosed that started pulling culture apart. People traveled much more. They could choose the people that they related to instead of being forced by geography to interact with those around you. This seems ok, right? But the commonality between people begin to break down. Still, there were things that united us—in fact, a lot. There was a growing pop culture mediated by media (music, film, and especially TV). This was a common experience for everyone in the culture. This was true, however, only when TV offered few choices—which at some points meant that everyone was basically watching the same thing. This happened for the last time, maybe, with the Cosby Show. You could talk with your grandmother or with most 4th graders about the Cosby show the day after it was on. Almost all watched it. It happened also with the nightly news. These popular TV shows were the last vestiges of commonality in our culture. They were the last place that we all “met” at the same time to do the same thing. This last culture hub has evaporated. It is gone. In its infancy TV was an odd (although perhaps destructive) centripetal force pulling us all—at points—toward the center. Today, cable TV has become a massive centrifugal force pulling everything apart. It is set—an almost infinite set—of caves. Each station has its own truth; its own culture. The automobile liberated us from having to interact with actual humans who lived near us allowing us to associate with others who are most like us; cable TV now allows us to not be bothered with anything that we do not like. We can avoid news. We can hang out in a cave that affirms our politics, our music, our mores. We live monochrome and our souls starve because nothing challenges our thinking. As our souls are thinning, we are also losing commonality with the people around us. We have no common experiences so we are subtly and substantively divorced from those around us. Therefore, Culture is Over! But that is not the worst of it…..
