The Conspiracy Against Thought
Uploaded by [Digital^Dude] on May 02, 2006
We only need to switch the T.V on. News bulletins, headlines, ‘Breaking News’ alerts keep flashing periodically on the screen throughout the day. We get news updates on our mobile phone, we get them in our mail, it’s there on the coffee-table, and it’s there flashing on billboards. Nerves under strain and being jarred by an overdose of information inflow is the hallmark of living in this century. We are living through the information explosion.
Ask any youngster born, bred and baptized in the spirit of the age, and you will be astounded by the lack of information, interest and concern they have for bigger things in life beyond narrowly personal trivia. It is clearly an absurdity.
This widespread and deep ignorance is a malaise very real. It shows itself in the general attitude we have towards life. It is an attitude of narcissism, that is to say, a pre-occupation with the self and its material well-being which is obsessive enough to pale down what happens in the wider world. This Narcissism has become a whole lifestyle which reflects the inner shallowness, the thoughtlessness and the depravity we are all victims of. It is all so very typical. The average modern has very typical tastes, mannerisms, pastimes and ideas, because he is the mass-produced product of our age. To a typical youngster, life is reduced to a minimal existence centering around chatrooms, pornography, cigarettes, teen hangouts, luxury gadgets. The pace of our lives is madly rushy, full of trivia, which, in the final analysis, matter nothing at all.
Everyone is really busy but no one is doing something actually; such a life is like a vehicle with its brakes failed, screeching madly onward: what this destination-unknown life does with us is that it makes us lose touch with the ebb and flow of life. The breathless pace creates in the mind restlessness and impatience so characteristic of the youth. It is like drugging oneself into the routine, so that when the drug diminishes, it leaves one hungering for what’s next. Hence there is a compulsive inner need to keep oneself busy with something exciting, thrilling and pleasurable 24/7. It gradually becomes a habit to such an extent that life shrinks in its meaning to just these.
Insulated in their air-conditioned, gadget-infested lives, we shut the windows that bring in the real world, content...