lost in the hall of mirrors; is self awareness the beginning of the end?

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Am being semi tongue in cheek, for the record. But as always, I do wish it were possible for things to be nice.
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't share your conviction that we are headed inexorably into darkness. This is not a narrative of decline for me. You take the affective landscape pf your childhood for humanity when in reality humanity changes as it's environments change, as it's modes and inputs change, as the contents of consciousness change. This is where Mcluhan is very very good. Output depends on input. A literate society is different from an oral, a digital from an analogue. It's history. It's time in action.
 

luka

Well-known member
You're like those commentors on YouTube which always locate the loss of societal innocence at the point they left school. Before Puff Daddy or before Lil Wayne or before Young Thug and so on, generation by generation. We are changing. It's frightening. But it's not necessarily a fall from grace into damnation.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Even Shakespeare and countless others were talking about decline though, no? The more I dig into writers from the past, the more I realise how this is probably just part of being human.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
in sci fi there’s this recurring idea that apocalypse/dystopia arrives at the point when machine’s become self-aware.

self awareness is likewise central to freudian castration complexes and the like.

satre has a thing about consciousness being inherently self conscious.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
I don't share your conviction that we are headed inexorably into darkness.

Fwiw I'm less convinced of this now than a few months ago. Much like pining for the past, impending doom seems to have been a mainstay of the collective conscious forever, with peaks and troughs of intensity.

This current level of self consciousness is new though.
 

Leo

Well-known member
how would we live without the prospect of impending doom? notions of catastrophe in the distant future seem key to the context of life, keeping us aware of our failings and mortality but with a sliver of hope that we can change, or at least postpone, the doom. a life of foreseeably uninterrupted pleasure, peace, harmony and environmental soundness would lull us into a moral stupor, we need reasons to strive, something to push against in order to develop.

I guess that's a religious argument, even if you don't believe in afterlife redemption.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Put it in the hands of the young, the uneducated, the uninitiated, the unadulterated, the pure, the real, the primitive, the human.

Uncultivate culture!
 

version

Well-known member
I keep picturing smart phones as some sort of gateway which opens out on the other side into an increasingly elaborate hall of mirrors. It's like the knot at the centre of a bow tie, everything narrows to that point then opens out again on the other side of it, only it's becoming increasingly fragmented and distorted and sprawling on that other side.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I keep picturing smart phones as some sort of gateway which opens out on the other side into an increasingly elaborate hall of mirrors. It's like the knot at the centre of a bow tie, everything narrows to that point then opens out again on the other side of it, only it's becoming increasingly fragmented and distorted and sprawling on that other side.

the premise behind your sadly-neglected morphosis thread.
 

version

Well-known member
I've brought it up in other threads too tbf, spider like limbs, tentacles and antennas. Something gets sucked in or rendered obsolete and several mechanical/digital ones come sprouting and flailing out the other side. A human Swiss army knife or hydra.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i've noticed. we'll do a silly thread on dolly parton or something at some point and before you know everyone will catch on and get all excited. on dissensus genius gets appreciated at very strange times and in very strange contexts. just wait for it.
 

version

Well-known member
re: hall of mirrors - I guess you have to factor in the passage of time and whether the image is distorted or accurate too. An obsession with one's own past isn't necessarily being transfixed by your reflection as it is, more as it was. That or you're seeing your reflection as it is and you dislike what you see.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
"In the age when life on earth was full no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous, without realizing that they were 'doing their duty.' They loved each other and did not know this was 'love of neighbor.' They deceived no one, yet they did not know that they were 'men to be trusted.' They were reliable and did not know this was 'good faith.' They lived freely together giving and taking and did not know they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history."

Is this a state to yearn for? On one hand, that true realness, the 'full life' sounds intriguing. Giving up control. We all know the best art and music comes from giving up control, forgetting yourself, becoming self-unconcious, and just becoming swept up by the world, sezied only by the true passions of life.

On the other hand, it sounds awfully boring.
 
Top