Ranch House and Nietzsche's footnote
Two very exciting things: PBS's Texas Ranch House and a footnote.
It's very difficult to decide which of the two is the most exciting. Texas Ranch House was sublime, both horrendous in how it reminded me of how little I enjoy my occupation, usually, and how the Cooke family behaved on the show. Awesome, I'm always looking for little reminders that I dislike what I do, sometimes I will forget, and watching people suffer through an incredibly challenging physical and social atmosphere with only their own ingenuity and dumb luck to assist is a powerful reminder of my own softness and complacency. A healthy dose of self-contempt can go a long way towards transcendent joy. It just keeps you from taking yourself too seriously. Imagining that you're peeling away the layers of luxury and comfort that insulate you from "survival" seems like a healthy exercise. I'm so far removed from "survival" that the instinct only comes into play when I'm crossing a busy street on my bike.
But the Cookes. Wow. How twisted. They reminded me of both the the crazy people from Malibu that were a disaster on Frontier House and the family in Manor House. These shows are such effective morality plays on the selfreinforcing nature of corruption when it comes to power and class. So, Mr. Cooke was a jerk, but that's not all that surprising. I've observed in the last few election cycles that white men in the 40s and 50s can be very scary and mean (something I have to look forward to). But what is really frightening is the lady Macbeth and the adoring children. Dude sits on his porch and rips off his employees, or "drives a hard bargain," demonstrating that he has learned no humility at all even though his is an obvious failure at everything but managing to wake up every morning for 2 and a half months. So, his wife overhears his dealing. I'm thinking she's going to come out and give him what for. My wife would have said, "you're a jerk, and I divorce you." (Or at least, if you don't apologize I'll divorce you.)But Mrs. Cooke comes out and says, "wow, you're amazing, I'm really proud of you."
What?
It's almost as nuts as when the Malibu family on Frontier House enthusiastically demonstrated the anatomy of a complete break with reality by pulling the carcass of some obviously suicidal rabbit out of their freezer in their enormous mansion on the cliffs. They said it was evidence that the experts that rated their performance poor didn't know what they were talking about. The dead rabbit, apparently one of the kids had shot it in the yard (more likely the thing threw itself at the barrel of the gun), demonstrated that the family had what "it took to survive" the winter in Montana, South Dakota, or wherever they were.
The footnote. Newspapers, or more specifically, news, drives me a little crazy. I have very little interest in reading it except for once a week or so. I'm interested in much of the topics found in a newspaper, but I just can't bring myself to read it everyday. It doesn't seem useful, and I've justified this in the past by pointing out that the news is always the same. It's as though we have the same few stories, viz. war dead, attack, murder, rape, kidnap, economy up, economy down, sports team up, sports team down, celebrity foible, etc. that we rewrite everyday with a few new facts.
As it works out, this type of stuff occurs en masse every single day, so our news outlets pick particular ones to fill in the blanks on the newspaper page. Unless you're tied up personally in the facts, you will not remember those facts that are not critical, and the critical facts, for the general public could be summed up in a ticker tape entry like "murders, rapes, kidnaps occurred today." From our perspective that should be enough to indicate that there is a real problem out there that needs attention. But instead we focus in on one or two particular cases and engorge as much innuendo as our journalists can extract from a vary narrow set of unique facts, unique to the particular crime/situation.
Anyway, a footnote in a book I'm reading really resonated with me. The claim is that the development of a free press, and particularly, daily newspapers has achieved tremendous good for society, in any number of ways. However, the downside is mesmerization by the ephemeral. We become consumed by an obsession with new news; it must be produced daily. We blind ourselves with meaningless details that will be forgotten anyway, but we nonetheless permit it to consume our creative energy. And thus, we are exhausted, overstimulated, and miss the larger picture, the trends, what is really happening in the world.
Today's rule: to try and find something novel in the news, and see if I would still call it "news," or to apply for the next PBS reality series.
It's very difficult to decide which of the two is the most exciting. Texas Ranch House was sublime, both horrendous in how it reminded me of how little I enjoy my occupation, usually, and how the Cooke family behaved on the show. Awesome, I'm always looking for little reminders that I dislike what I do, sometimes I will forget, and watching people suffer through an incredibly challenging physical and social atmosphere with only their own ingenuity and dumb luck to assist is a powerful reminder of my own softness and complacency. A healthy dose of self-contempt can go a long way towards transcendent joy. It just keeps you from taking yourself too seriously. Imagining that you're peeling away the layers of luxury and comfort that insulate you from "survival" seems like a healthy exercise. I'm so far removed from "survival" that the instinct only comes into play when I'm crossing a busy street on my bike.
But the Cookes. Wow. How twisted. They reminded me of both the the crazy people from Malibu that were a disaster on Frontier House and the family in Manor House. These shows are such effective morality plays on the selfreinforcing nature of corruption when it comes to power and class. So, Mr. Cooke was a jerk, but that's not all that surprising. I've observed in the last few election cycles that white men in the 40s and 50s can be very scary and mean (something I have to look forward to). But what is really frightening is the lady Macbeth and the adoring children. Dude sits on his porch and rips off his employees, or "drives a hard bargain," demonstrating that he has learned no humility at all even though his is an obvious failure at everything but managing to wake up every morning for 2 and a half months. So, his wife overhears his dealing. I'm thinking she's going to come out and give him what for. My wife would have said, "you're a jerk, and I divorce you." (Or at least, if you don't apologize I'll divorce you.)But Mrs. Cooke comes out and says, "wow, you're amazing, I'm really proud of you."
What?
It's almost as nuts as when the Malibu family on Frontier House enthusiastically demonstrated the anatomy of a complete break with reality by pulling the carcass of some obviously suicidal rabbit out of their freezer in their enormous mansion on the cliffs. They said it was evidence that the experts that rated their performance poor didn't know what they were talking about. The dead rabbit, apparently one of the kids had shot it in the yard (more likely the thing threw itself at the barrel of the gun), demonstrated that the family had what "it took to survive" the winter in Montana, South Dakota, or wherever they were.
The footnote. Newspapers, or more specifically, news, drives me a little crazy. I have very little interest in reading it except for once a week or so. I'm interested in much of the topics found in a newspaper, but I just can't bring myself to read it everyday. It doesn't seem useful, and I've justified this in the past by pointing out that the news is always the same. It's as though we have the same few stories, viz. war dead, attack, murder, rape, kidnap, economy up, economy down, sports team up, sports team down, celebrity foible, etc. that we rewrite everyday with a few new facts.
As it works out, this type of stuff occurs en masse every single day, so our news outlets pick particular ones to fill in the blanks on the newspaper page. Unless you're tied up personally in the facts, you will not remember those facts that are not critical, and the critical facts, for the general public could be summed up in a ticker tape entry like "murders, rapes, kidnaps occurred today." From our perspective that should be enough to indicate that there is a real problem out there that needs attention. But instead we focus in on one or two particular cases and engorge as much innuendo as our journalists can extract from a vary narrow set of unique facts, unique to the particular crime/situation.
Anyway, a footnote in a book I'm reading really resonated with me. The claim is that the development of a free press, and particularly, daily newspapers has achieved tremendous good for society, in any number of ways. However, the downside is mesmerization by the ephemeral. We become consumed by an obsession with new news; it must be produced daily. We blind ourselves with meaningless details that will be forgotten anyway, but we nonetheless permit it to consume our creative energy. And thus, we are exhausted, overstimulated, and miss the larger picture, the trends, what is really happening in the world.
Today's rule: to try and find something novel in the news, and see if I would still call it "news," or to apply for the next PBS reality series.
posted by Michael at
12:56 PM
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