Category Archives: Society
Cultural Stagnation
Kurt Anderson wrote an article in Vanity Fair where he makes the claim that our culture is stuck.
For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.
As an aside – if you want to hear a great discussion of this article there is a podcast episode of the Slate Cultural Gabfest that inspired my article. In fact, they publish weekly, and I greatly endorse adding it to your podcast queue.
He points to styles, and how if you think of the 50s to 60s to 70s to the 80s you could easily pick out what decade they were in. But between the 90s and today it would be harder. He makes the obvious musical reference of the year – pointing out how Lady Gaga is simply warmed over Madonna. He even points out that after the rise of hip hop, no big musical swing has taken its place.
Make a couple arguments for why this is. Perhaps we have simply reached the pinnacle of design in many cases. Cars haven’t changed that much in design, but under the hood the technology is moving quickly. So while the appearance is stagnant, the workings change, but I suppose that isn’t culture.
Or, we have the ability now to portray our past and explore decades and the style of history like never before with costuming and technology. This might cause us to not look forward and instead gaze longingly backwards.
Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out. So as the Web and artificially intelligent smartphones and the rise of China and 9/11 and the winners-take-all American economy and the Great Recession disrupt and transform our lives and hopes and dreams, we are clinging as never before to the familiar in matters of style and culture.
However, I tend to focus on an idea that he only gives short service to – one small line in the second to last paragraph.
And yet, on the other hand, for the first time, anyone anywhere with any arcane cultural taste can now indulge it easily and fully online, clicking themselves deep into whatever curious little niche (punk bossa nova, Nigerian noir cinema, pre-war Hummel figurines) they wish. Americans: quirky, independent individualists!
He dismisses technology almost wholesale. However, with the internet and shifting to new forms of media, we can connect with new people that we weren’t able to before. You might be the only fan of some certain band in your group of friend (and good for you!). Or, you might be the only emo kid in your town. However, through social networks you can find a whole community of people out there who share your passion.
This allows us to appreciate our own preferences, and not adapt to a greater “mass zeitgeist” of what is cool. My theory is this: You can’t imagine a national cultural concept because we are too fractured now. There isn’t one cool thing to listen to, or one cool way to dress. There are niches that are appreciated by small pockets. It isn’t that we stagnated, its that we branched out and became unique.
Fair v Objective
I think our society has taken being “fair” to an extreme. We have confused the freedoms we have to be an excuse to be able to have a stupid opinion and for that wrong opinion to be worth as much as a correct valid opinion supported by facts.
The is most evident in being “fair” in media reports. The media is so concerned with being labeled biased, that they give equal time and weight to stupid opposing arguments. This is best summed up by the popular quote from Paul Krugman:
The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that’s partly because there’s a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn’t like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column—in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally—was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: ‘Shape of Earth—Views Differ.’ Then they’d quote some Democrats saying that it was round.
This is the key difference in being objective. Being objective means not letting personal biases change your reporting or opinion of something. If something is obviously true, you shouldn’t say it could be false just because that fits your world view or would benefit you in some way.
Stop being fair. Be objective.
Verbal Fast Food
Admitted this post is a bit grumpier than usual. Think of it as a tribute to the recently deceased Andy Rooney.
One of my biggest pet peeves (and turn offs in girls) is when people use curse words too freely. I’m not some puritan who doesn’t want my precious ears tainted by a strongly worded tirade. However, I cannot stand when people insert swear words into their dialogue at every other word. It comes off as lazy to me. The speaker comes off as trying to insert emphasis, but without the vocabulary to back in up, thus relying on a weak crutch to pack a verbal punch. Its the cheap, easy way out. It’s the fast food of word choice. And just like food, its the least healthy choice.
The question is not whether this is bad. I do not think anyone would argue an increasingly vulgar and limited vocabulary is better. The question is what is to blame. I come down to two theories.
First, I could argue this is a failing of our education system and a worship of celebrities who, quite bluntly aren’t bright. We hold up celebrities and athletes of Jersey Shore and their ilk, who can barely form coherent sentences when they are sober, much less during the drunken stupor they spend most of the show in. Our generation equates stupid with cool. It is cool not to care. And using big words even less cool. So we emulate that, if there is even that much credit. I would suggest that we can’t even come up with the proper words to adequately describe our feelings, or worry that it wouldn’t be understood by our audience, so we rely on the easy obviously choice.
However, I also tend to put this problem in the same category as our generation’s overuse of the word “like” in sentences as a place holder while we think of what to say next. One of my friends suggested a second theory that dovetails with this more. He suggested that our generation has gotten accustomed to online and text based communication methods. We aren’t used to verbal discussions as much. Being less practiced than previous generations in the art of conversation, we don’t have the skill to put together complex language. “We dont have control over all facets of the communication, and cant present to the world exactly what we want to project.”
Does it bother you when someone cusses for no reason, or am I just being extra picky about this? Perhaps I am just becoming too old, and cursing is one of those rebellious things we do in youth to show we aren’t just kids anymore. Maybe we all grow out of it eventually. Hopefully my generation is just on the cusp of losing this habit. But I fucking doubt it.
How cognitive surplus will change the world
Add this to my argument about why I blog.
We all have free time. I choose to spend my time creating. Adding creative and intellectual matter to the world. What do you do with yours?
Cell Phones Are The New Cigarettes
”As soon as college students are out of class, cell phones, and iPods materialize in their hands…” (Charles Simic, in the New York Review of Books.) Cell phones are the new cigarettes –discuss
-Slate Culture Gabfest
Think about that for a second before you laugh. Whats the first thing many people do when they wake up? Check their missed calls. What do you do to take a break at work? Check your texts. Add the vague notions about cancer health concerns, and you could easily fill in those answers with cigarettes instead of cell phones.
Broad and Shallow to Deep and Narrow
NPR has been running stories all week about how technology is affecting society. One of their stories resonated with me. The discussion focused on how because of new technologies we are able to seek out and find entertainment and topics that appeal to us more easily than ever. Because of the ease of finding the specific thing that rings our bell, we can more easily filter out everything that doesn’t.
American culture is sliced up in so many different ways that what’s popular with one group can go virtually unnoticed by another. Univision, for example, is watched by millions of Latinos in the U.S., but millions of other Americans couldn’t tell you what channel it’s on.
Think about it like this. Back when your parents were children they had a choice of 3 television channels. They watched what was on. Because of this many people watched the same things, and had the same “experiences”. Music was delivered via radio stations that decided what to play. Everyone grew up listening to the same music.
Fast forward to today. I can find a youtube channel or blog that is dedicated to my oddest hobby. I can find indie bands producing a specific sound that refuses to fit into any category and probably hasn’t been heard by anyone in my social circle.
My friend described this phenomenon as having fewer grand scale shared culture, but a deeper connection with those who do share our common interests. You might have only one person in your group of friends who likes the same web show, but you two probably know all the catchphrases.
What impact is this having on our society? Do we feel less kinship with greater society because we don’t feel like we share anything with our neighbors? Does this encourage increasingly isolated interests?
In such a fractured society, is America at risk of losing a common culture? Rosenberg of The Atlantic says maybe. But she also thinks it will make us appreciate the mass cultural events that do occur even more, like the end of the Harry Potter series or Michael Jackson’s death.
Successful Women Encourage Hook Up Culture
A new study about relationships was discussed on Salon this past week. The theory is that female successes in education and the workplace is making casual hookups without relationships more common.
Women outnumber men on college campuses, they are making great strides in the working world. This is good. However, everyone wants to date someone equal to them in intelligence, income, status, etc. No one really likes to date down. (I think this is especially true with women. You rarely see the male equivalent to a trophy wife.)
It’s not that young educated women don’t marry — in fact they have the highest odds of getting and staying married — it’s that if you look at the whole relationship scene out there today, more than ever women feel like they’re competing for men. In American colleges, 57 percent of students are women and 43 percent are men. That’s a radical reversal of where we were 30 or 40 years ago. Presuming that people are attracted to people who are like them educationally, it means looking for secure relationships becomes challenging because the sex ratio is so imbalanced.
So, with women succeeding more than Men, the pool of attractive, qualified, equivalent Men is getting smaller. This means the traditional method where guys would court girls is flipped. The women feel like they have to compete for the men because the numbers are skewed against them. The best way to get a guy’s attention? (hint, despite what your mother told you- its not through his stomach) Sex.
The cold-hard truth is that women’s successes have left them with a small pool of similarly educated and financially stable men, they say. As the authors put it in a press release, “It’s created an imbalance that tips relationship power in the direction of the men. Instead of men competing for women, today women feel like they must compete for men.”
So, girls are giving it up easier than they did in the past. They know that if they don’t hook up quickly and without the traditional requirements of a relationship, another girl likely will. Simple economics of supply and demand.
The women wind up competing with each other — not necessarily to marry because they’re not interested in marriage at that point — but they compete with each other to attract men. How do you compete with other women to attract men? Well, sex is the way to get his attention. It’s the opposite of a cartel effect where women would say, “All right, we need to band together and artificially restrict the price of sex and get it high, even if we don’t want to, in order to extract things from men.” It used to be women would shame each other for selling low.
Do you see this playing out in the real world? Do you feel like you have to compete for guys’ attention instead of guys courting you? Or, do you think this entire study is crap, and women are just embracing the benefits of being equals to men, and figuring out that they can have relationship free sex without outdated consequences like getting a reputation?
Same State, different states
While traveling home tonight for Thanksgiving with my family, I heard a story comparing two very different parts of Virginia. One part of the story interviewed a town in southwest VA. The second part examined northern Virginia.
Northern Virginia was shown to be prosperous. The shopping malls were all full, and even the public schools perform well. Education levels are high, and the income levels are correlated.
Southern VA was the opposite story. The residents are less educated, less prosperous and are even expected to live shorter lives.
I’ve spent time in almost all areas of Virginia, and this didn’t surprise me at all. I’ve always thought there isn’t really a south v north difference in society as much as there is an urban v rural. It is striking how where you live affects your life to such a degree. My favorite quote from the report:
Crossing Virginia is like taking a time machine from the past to the future.
If you want to hear the story here. You can also read the text of the report here.
Charisma Calculations
Tim Ferris has a guest post on his blog where the writer describes how people who are really good at making the person they are talking to feel like they are the only one in the room are really doing three things very well.
You should definitely read the whole thing. He focuses on Bill Clinton as an example, and goes into great detail about each factor.
1) Eye Contact – obviously this lets the person know you are focused on them.
2) Personal Space – the idea is to get close to the person without making them feel uncomfortable. The interesting aspect about this is that it is not just about how close you physically are to someone. There are several different factors.
- Making direct eye contact with you
- Facing you directly (as opposed to standing side-by-side looking into the crowd)
- Touching you (i.e., rubbing elbows in a crowd, patting your back, touching your arm or shoulder)
- Raising their voice
- Talking about you (as opposed to a neutral subject)
3) Being Present – stop thinking about other things. Instead be in the room with the person. If you are distant in quickly becomes apparently in the conversation. If you want to make the person feel like you are focused on them, you must actually focus on them.
The reason for doing this is that you leave a lasting impression with that person, as opposed to the tens of meaningless, forgotten interactions we have daily. You are also much more persuasive. The examples the writer gives involving Clinton show this in detail.
Facebook predicts when you will break up
An analyst has studied Facebook users’ relationship statuses, and determined that people went from in a relationship to single in higher numbers at three specific times during the year. The shocker? Two of them are around Christmas and Valentine’s Day. The other is right before Spring Break. (Less shocking haha)
It seems that there are three periods that feature as the most popular time to tell you paramour that the light has gone out, the love has gone south, and the train is about to leave town: just after Valentine’s Day, just before spring break and two weeks before Christmas.
If you are interested in his entire presentation, you can watch it below.
The follow up question is why? Do people think about relationships more during these times? Do the stresses of the holidays and Valentine’s Day make people freak out?
