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James Corbett appears on the “How To Kill A Sacred Cow” podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on public discourse in the age of the internet.
Interview 1501 – James Corbett on How To Kill A Sacred Cow
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What if the common man of decades or centuries ago had the ability afforded today to voice opinion instantly throughout the world? What tier of humanity was represented by the superior elocution of our forebears? Are brilliant minds less likely to engage or be allowed to engage in today’s political arena?
The common man of the past was concerned with grubbing up mangleworzels or potatoes for his winter fodder…. he was both dumber and less educated then modern people and at the same time modern people are ABLE TO ACT in ways far dumber then he could because we are so rich that our poor choices don’t kill us off right away….
as the vid linked says better then I do -after about 2:30 he talks about how our easy rich lives make us immune to the effects of our actions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NJIj47Tusw
Libertydan
A Convention to rewrite the constitution would allow those who have been hindered (even if only a little) by it to remove the only idea that liits their power… the very religious IDEA of the constitution is what made the USA a better place then the USSR which also had a wonderfully writian constitution that NO ONE cared about…. be glad that the framers are considered godlike by sufficient numbers of people that their creation, made for often very selfish and immediate reasons, protects so many human rights by enumerating them for the masses….in a generation we may be back to the cut and thrust of the late roman republic.
The USA (and the west in general) is far too immoral to create and live under anything as good as the constitution. Be glad of the afterglow
Youtube now pushes atheism and leftism to my IP address… bitchute all the way
James, do you recall the old National Geographic TV specials that
took us into the Primate Studies Labs of American universities?
Didn’t we marvel at the “intelligence” of chimps as they knuckled
their choice of snack or plaything? They hooted with big toothy
grins when a slice of banana or a little plastic toy dropped from
a chute. We shared their joy. I recall these vivid impressions when
I watch people scrolling through the choices of emoticons or emojis
as they attempt to communicate with digital friends. But I don’t
share their joy.
A coincidence to share. An hour before listening to your podcast
on the decline of communications skills, the latest edition of
QUEEN’S ALUMNI REVIEW was delivered.(My daughter’s school,not mine)
This is “The Language Issue,” and I did read the lead article on
“The New Rules of Language”, written by an “Internet Linguist”.
Her article declares books to be dead, and old conventions such
as a concern for grammar and spelling, to be a form that has run
its course. That was all just a “notion” anyway. Arrogant as a tax
collector, she expects HER skill set to migrate to the printed page
and to language instruction, just to satisfy “people whose linguistic
norms are oriented to the Internet”. In future, she demands, all
books printed must include pictographs and emojis inserted in the
lines of (outmoded) text, because … ? I suppose that in the near
future when all Canadian universities have hired a “Chair’ in “Internet
Linguistics,” lobbying will begin to have the editors at our University
Presses yield to “The democratization of language”.
I am privileged to live in “the world’s most progressive society”.
Orwell would not be jealous.
Cheers!
I will stick to one corner of this discussion. Yes, sound bites prevail and people start reacting badly if you develop some thoughts even in 4 or 5 sentences. One person on Facebook said he was interested in a comment of mine but that he couldn’t read it because I had jammed everything into one paragraph -it was not longer than the comment I am leaving here. I remember reading a single sentence of Dickens’that went on for two pages. The sound bite people also prefer you to leave a space between your paragraphs and to this custom I sometimes adhere. In my comments like this one my computer used not allow divisions and everything, title and all, was jammed into one crammed piece of prose – maybe because they preferred sound bites. Fortunately this has changed. Now I can publish the title of a poem and put the poem underneath it. I was on a blog for discussions of music and composers. One member wrote to me that he was glad when people like me and my Canadian composer friend left the blog as we made him feel stupid, instead of trying to learn something from us and asking questions You were not allowed to know anything technical about music. This brings me to a difference between me and James. I find that 9O% of pop and rock music consists of sound bites whereas great (significant) music develops its thoughts. As James Joyce, an author Corbett adnires, does.