Synchronicity

[arguchik]

In a weird bit of synchronicity...after writing and posting my last entry, in which I worry some about my over-consumption of "screens," I went to my bookshelves to pick out a book, which I then began to read. The lucky winner: Adrienne Rich's On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Here's a lengthy excerpt (I'll give you the full paragraphs so you'll get a little bit of context):

In particular, the women's movement of the late twentieth century is evolving in the face of a culture of manipulated passivity (the mirror-image of which is violence, both random and institutional). The television screen purveys everywhere its loaded messages; but even when and where the message may seem less deadly to the mind, the nature of the medium itself breeds passivity, docility, flickering concentration. The decline in adult literacy means not merely a decline in the capacity to read and write, but a decline in the impulse to puzzle out, brood upon, look up in the dictionary, mutter over, argue about, turn inside-out in verbal euphoria, the "incomparable medium" of language--Tillie Olsen's term. And this decline comes, ironically, at a moment in history when women, the majority of the world's people, have become most aware of our need for real literacy, for our own history, most searchingly aware of the lies and distortions of the culture men have devised, when we are finally prepared to take on the most complex, subtle, and drastic revaluation ever attempted of the condition of the species.

The television screen has throughout the world replaced, or is fast replacing: oral poetry; old wives' tales; children's story-acting games and verbal lore; lullabies; "playing the sevens"; political argument; the reading of books too difficult for the reader, yet somehow read; tales of "when-I-was-your-age" told by parents and grandparents to children, linking them to their own past; singing in parts; memorization of poetry; the oral transmitting of skills and remedies; reading aloud; recitation; both community and solitude. People grow up who not only don't know how to read, a late-acquired skill among the world's majority; they don't know how to talk, to tell stories, to sing, to listen and remember, to argue, to pierce an opponent's argument, to use metaphor and imagery and inspired exaggeration in speech; people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen. (12-13)

--Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

Yeah, what she said. I might not be quite as doom-sayish as Rich is being here, but the basic sentiment is the same. I don't like what too much television does to my attention span, to my taste for intellectual labor, to my ability to self-motivate, to my feelings of efficacy and purpose in life. I don't want to erase it--or the internets--completely from my life, and in fact I think they constitute new ways of expressing and making meaning in the world. In other words, I don't fully agree with Rich that they necessarily dumb down our intellects and interactions, but they do often have that effect. However, when they do have the effect of dumbing us down, perhaps it's no more so than other distractions that were available in earlier historical periods. I mean, at one time moralists were all up in arms about how many novels people (especially women) were reading. In any case, I feel that my consumption of these two screen-based media has gotten out of balance, and that I really need to restore a balance (or find a new balance, whatever) that feels better--healthier--to me.

Comments

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

kill your television (http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/).

I think both TV and the internet (particularly the latter) are complicated systems with multiple nooks and crannies for subversive/resistant activity that regulation and capitalism can never fully eradicate. That said, with every step "we" take away from the kind of critical thinking that Rich is advocating, is a step toward the kind of domination you're referring to.

Here's the passage from Marx in which your borrowed phrase appears (thanks to the Wiki entry about the phrase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people)), because, as with the passage from Rich that I quoted in my original entry, this one bears repeating in its entirety:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

The German phrase: "Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes" carries nuances that get lost in translation: "das Volk" is something more than just "the masses." It is "the people," "the populace," "the nation," and/or "the public." It is not just an undifferentiated group of human beings, but rather the group that constitutes the heart, the motive force, the valorized "folk" of a culture. Hitler played on this resonance when he developed the Volkswagen--literally, the "car for the (German) people." (In German the distinction between "der Wagen" and "das Auto" is one based in economic class; "das Auto" is a more refined sort of vehicle, whereas "der Wagen" is more folksy.)

[gushgush.livejournal.com]

Ahh, this is what I get for trying to sound intellectual with a phd candidate who calls herself arguchik.
Thank you for correcting my mis-quote of Marx. I think the sentiment remained basically intact in my version, or at least it suited my point.
Upon reading the Marx passage I was reminded of J.Lennon's "god is a concept by which we measure our pain" which reminded me of Don McLean's line about "while Lennon read a book of Marx..." from the song "American Pie". I guess we come to our ideas through various channels and sources but the basic truths remain the same, albeit sometimes quite diluted.
I wonder if my own worries about TV being the tool that will finally and completely subjugate humanity to the will of the great Whomever are merely the modern version of the same fears that caused people to worry about novels or religion, etal, at various other times in history. The human spirit has survived those other threats and no doubt will survive this one too -- but what will be the cost this time? How much humanity will remain when truths are only gleaned through the cracks and crevices (nooks and crannies) that have been overlooked by Them?

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that I was correcting your quotation of Marx. In fact, the way you worded it is how it's usually translated, and how I would have said it too. I was just talking about the nuances that translation leaves behind, if you will, in the German. In other words, the meaning itself isn't lost, I just think it's interesting to contemplate a subtle difference in how the language resonates in German.

[(Anonymous)]

I was totally sincere in thanking you for the Marx passage as I can be somewhat pedantic about such things myself. It was refreshing, if not challenging, to read Marx's words in their entirety, not just the usual (mis)quote thrown in and twisted to whatever context it may conveniently apply. The fact that you are able to parse subtleties from the original German also added to the experience. Having studied a foreign language and done some translations myself (BA, Spanish '93) and read both good and bad translations as done by others, I readily appreciate how a deeper meaning of a phrase can be esily "lost in translation".

[gushgush.livejournal.com]

LJ has some issues with posting as a person with an account when getting the message from an email server... hence the previous annonymous post. What you didn't see is the 1/2 hour I spent trying to both log in and post my reply.
The final edited version should read like this:

I was totally sincere in thanking you for the Marx passage as I myself can be somewhat pedantic about such things. It was refreshing, if not challenging, to read Marx's words in their entirety, as opposed to just the usual (mis)quote thrown in and twisted to whatever context it may conveniently apply. The fact that you are able to parse subtleties from the original German also added to the experience. Having studied a foreign language and done some translation/interpretation myself (BA, Spanish '93), I've read both good and bad translations as done by others and I readily appreciate how a deeper meaning of a phrase can be easily "lost in translation".

btw--Thanks for that Kill your TV link. That kind of shit is right up my alley.


I'm not sure how different that is because I'm becoming way too frustrated to re-read this again.