Triviality leads?
Oh, how embarrassing! It appears that John Schumaker wrote this article many, many years ago, but did any of us “listen up?” NO! Now see what a mess we are looking at! Let me clip the most salient quotes for you. R.J.
In his article The Triumph of Triviality, John F Schumaker asks if consumer society is too shallow to deal with the deepening crises facing the planet.
The latest results of the cultural indoctrination stakes are in. Triviality leads, followed closely by frivolity, superficiality, and mindless distraction. Vanity looks great, while profundity is bringing up the rear. Pettiness is powering ahead, along with passivity and indifference. Curiosity lost interest, wisdom was scratched, and critical thought had to be put down. Ego is running wild. Attention span continues to shorten and survival is a long shot.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Half a century ago, humanistic thinkers were heralding a great awakening that would usher in a golden age of enlightened living. Pathfinders like Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollow May, and Viktor Frankl were laying the groundwork for a new social order distinguished by enlightened living.
This tantalizing vision was the antithesis of our society of blinkered narcissists and hypnogogic materialists. Dumbness was not our destiny. Planetary annihilation was not the plan. By the 21st century, we were supposed to be the rarefied “people of tomorrow,” inhabiting a sagacious and wholesome world….
We would be upwardly driven toward authenticity, social equality, and the welfare of coming generations. We would revere nature, realize the unimportance of material things, and hold a healthy skepticism about technology and science. An anti-institutional vision would enable us to fend off dehumanizing bureaucratic and corporate authority as we united in an ongoing realization of our “higher needs.”
The author goes on musing upon Erich Fromm’s, Carl Roger’s and Abraham Maslow’s guarded but apparently hopeful and positive views of our futures.
But something happened along the way….
Operating on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance, and dedicating itself to unceasing material overkill, consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for resisting upward growth, and keeping people incomplete, shallow, and dehumanized. Materialism continues to gain ground, even in the face of impending eco-apocalypse.
Pulp culture is a feast of tinsel and veneer. The ideal citizen is hollow, an empty tract through which gadgets can pass quickly, largely undigested, so there is always space for more. Reality races by as a blur of images, surface impressions, and consumer choices that never feel quite real. We know it as the fast lane and whip ourselves to keep apace….
In this dense fog, the meaningful and meaningless can easily get reversed. Losers look like winners, and the lofty and ludicrous get confused. The caption under a recent ad for men’s underwear read “I’ve got something that’s good for your body, mind, and soul.”…
Out of this cock-up comes the most pressing question of our age. Can a highly trivialized culture, marooned between fact and fiction, and dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities in order to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming today? Empty talk and token gestures aside, it doesn’t appear to be happening.…
In the war against trivialization some groups speak of “planetization” as the expansive worldview that can slow our cultural death march. It was French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who coined this term in calling for a global mind that fused our ecological, spiritual, and political energies, and thereby paved the way for harmonious living and lasting peace.
The cultural indoctrination race is not over. The losers are still winning and the odds for a revolution of consciousness are no more than even. But is there an alternative other than to drown in our own shallowness?
Reprinted years ago with John’s permission and quotes heavily re-used here. (First published in New Internationalist.)
The Triumph of Triviality
Written by John F. Schumaker
In his article The Triumph of Triviality, John F Schumaker asks if consumer society is too shallow to deal with the deepening crises facing the planet.
The latest results of the cultural indoctrination stakes are in. Triviality leads, followed closely by frivolity, superficiality, and mindless distraction. Vanity looks great, while profundity is bringing up the rear. Pettiness is powering ahead, along with passivity and indifference. Curiosity lost interest, wisdom was scratched, and critical thought had to be put down. Ego is running wild. Attention span continues to shorten and survival is a long shot.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Half a century ago, humanistic thinkers were heralding a great awakening that would usher in a golden age of enlightened living. Pathfinders like Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollow May, and Viktor Frankl were laying the groundwork for a new social order distinguished by enlightened living.
This tantalizing vision was the antithesis of our society of blinkered narcissists and hypnogogic materialists. Dumbness was not our destiny. Planetary annihilation was not the plan. By the 21st century, we were supposed to be the rarefied “people of tomorrow,” inhabiting a sagacious and wholesome world….
We would be upwardly driven toward authenticity, social equality, and the welfare of coming generations. We would revere nature, realize the unimportance of material things, and hold a healthy skepticism about technology and science. An anti-institutional vision would enable us to fend off dehumanizing bureaucratic and corporate authority as we united in an ongoing realization of our “higher needs.”
The author goes on musing upon Erich Fromm’s, Carl Roger’s and Abraham Maslow’s guarded but apparently hopeful and positive views of our futures.
But something happened along the way….
Operating on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance, and dedicating itself to unceasing material overkill, consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for resisting upward growth, and keeping people incomplete, shallow, and dehumanized. Materialism continues to gain ground, even in the face of impending eco-apocalypse.
Pulp culture is a feast of tinsel and veneer. The ideal citizen is hollow, an empty tract through which gadgets can pass quickly, largely undigested, so there is always space for more. Reality races by as a blur of images, surface impressions, and consumer choices that never feel quite real. We know it as the fast lane and whip ourselves to keep apace….
In this dense fog, the meaningful and meaningless can easily get reversed. Losers look like winners, and the lofty and ludicrous get confused. The caption under a recent ad for men’s underwear read “I’ve got something that’s good for your body, mind, and soul.”…
Out of this cock-up comes the most pressing question of our age. Can a highly trivialized culture, marooned between fact and fiction, and dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities in order to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming today? Empty talk and token gestures aside, it doesn’t appear to be happening.…
In the war against trivialization some groups speak of “planetization” as the expansive worldview that can slow our cultural death march. It was French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who coined this term in calling for a global mind that fused our ecological, spiritual, and political energies, and thereby paved the way for harmonious living and lasting peace.
The cultural indoctrination race is not over. The losers are still winning and the odds for a revolution of consciousness are no more than even. But is there an alternative other than to drown in our own shallowness?
Reprinted years ago with John’s permission and quotes heavily re-used here. (First published in New Internationalist.)