Anybody got twenty cents?

(Or, In Search Of New Paradigms)

Please forgive me. Trekking through a life in this world can occasionally make me feel dirty, and when I do, I find there's nothing like a soapbox to clean me up. Accordingly, much of what I'm about to write I have written before- -though maybe not in this fashion.

Have you ever felt as though the unwritten laws that govern our modern society are in fact written down someplace...in Martian? Variants on this thought seem to cycle through my head with increasing frequency as I age. That might be the very definition of aging: the overwhelming feeling that society is leaving you behind, and good riddance. I often feel like screaming "But it's not supposed to be this way!"...even though I understand that my scream will be lost in the insidious whisper of what Daniel Quinn called 'Mother Culture', I must, however, scream.

Mother Culture...according to Quinn, she lays down the conventions by which we live, and harshly punishes those who choose to defy those conventions. Likely you've heard her whispering without realizing that's what you're hearing...it's as if her edicts have been ingrained in our very cells. Survival of the fittest. Your bank account balance determines what you're worth. Don't rock the boat. If you don't take advantage of the low interest rates and drive up your personal debt, the terrorists win.

Of late I think Mother Culture's whisper has become a bit more shrill, and the things she's whispering increasingly make no sense at all to me. For what it's worth, I'm determined to set her straight. I'm looking for new paradigms that are really ancient, mostly forgotten paradigms. It seems to me as if the ones we've been using are not getting us where we want to go. Have you looked at the world lately? Are you happy with what you've seen?
Surprisingly, most people are. That's why effecting meaningful change is such an uphill battle: we're fighting people who resist change, feeling that their lives work for them, and who cares about the rest of us. I'm firmly of the belief that changing hearts and minds is essential if we want to change the world. And so...

KNOWLEDGE IS NOT POWER

Contrary to what you might have heard, we don't live in an information society. We live in a bullshit society. Our world runs on bullshit: it fertilizes prejudice, ignorance, and muleheadedness, all prized qualities in today's society, often mistaken for power. While virtually every factoid there ever was is readily available with a few clicks of a mouse, there's nothing to suggest that any of it is true. A computer with umpty-terabytes of memory can be crammed with the sum total of all human knowledge and yet remain an inert pile of silicon.
I don't hear the word 'wisdom' often anymore...I think Mother Culture has done a remarkable job of suppressing that word, folding it into 'knowledge'. Knowledge is not wisdom. Sometimes knowledge is the very opposite of wisdom.
Knowledge confers the ability to tinker with the environment on a micro or a macro level. Wisdom may suggest that this is not advisable.
Knowledge gives us a momentary snapshot of current events. It may even be a very comprehensive snapshot, down to the last detail. Wisdom is only concerned with where we are insofar as it reflects on where we've been and where we're going. You can't 'know' the future, but sufficient wisdom can serve as a fairly reliable guide.
It is wisdom that reflects true power, not knowledge. Some of the wisest people I know have little formal schooling. They wouldn't know Plato from Play Dough and furthermore don't care. In my experience, these are the sorts of people who are intimately aware of 'the facts of life'...but also know when those facts can be safely set aside and ignored. Inner strength does not come from book larnin' and never did.

GOING FAST IS NOT THE SAME AS GETTING SOMEWHERE

We live in a wildly accelerated world: Mother Culture has been most strident on this point. I can't remember the last time a food product was marketed without mention of its timesaving quality, for instance--often ahead of whatever nutrition might be left after the chemists have finished molding it into something that will cook in seconds. Always we trend towards the quick: faster computers, speed dating, instant messaging, learn-to-read-in-the-womb (hey, if it's not out yet, just wait for it!) What this has led to, and I'm far from the first to say it, is an implacable demand among today's younger generation for immediate-if-not-sooner gratification. The notion that one might have to work at a task to succeed at it is all but lost on these folks. What looks like insolence and laziness is really just confusion: why haven't they promoted me yet? I have a degree! I fast-tracked it, too!

TOTAL CONNECTIVITY IS ACTUALLY TOTAL ISOLATION

A song from the musical Avenue Q claims "The Internet Is For Porn." Well, not every use of the Net is prurient, but most of them are intensely private. While it is true that, in short order, you can feel very close to somebody you've never actually met, in many cases it's a false closeness: witness the number of young girls e-lured into predators' lairs, all the while thinking they're chatting with somebody just like them.
What with wireless technology, the Internet no longer confines you to your living room. But wherever you are on the globe, you're looking at a small screen: the online world of pure sight has largely displaced the outmoded 'real' world, which required the use of all five senses. To my mind, it's a poor trade.

I'm not sure what the answers are to these problems that most of the rest of the world doesn't recognize as problems. I do know, however, that the world as it is presently presented is a show I've lost all interest in. I prefer to live in my own reality, where life proceeds at a leisurely pace, I can step away from incessant demands on my time, and people have to work just a bit to reach me.

Cross-posted at no More Talking Points.