Over boeken, literaire reflecties en het web van literatuur, door Niek de Greef. Werner Herzog, Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul en meer. Nederlandse en Engelstalige boeken.

Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley was right, not Orwell

Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death book cover

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman discusses the consequences of a culture transitioning from orality to literacy to visual media.

The number of hours the average American watches TV has remained steady, at about four and a half hours a day, every day (by age sixty-five, a person will have spent twelve uninterrupted years in front of the TV).

The Internet and smartphones have shifted the focus from TV to the Internet, but not the totaltime spent on these media.

Postman looks at the great literary dystopians Orwell and Huxley, who must have foreseen such developments and the dangers they bring along.

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
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What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
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Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

Read more

John Gray – Straw Dogs – Gray pushes on: consciousness isn’t just shaped by media, it’s a media byproduct.

Agenda 2030 dame – Huxley’s “man’s infinite appetite for distractions” in action.

Beyond Time Management: Oliver Burkeman’s ‘Four Thousand Weeks’

Four Thousand Week – Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, is a book about what Burkeman calls “the paradox of limitation.”

All of this illustrates what might be termed the paradox of limitation, which runs through everything that follows: the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

Burkeman shares a wealth of wisdom on how we can achieve more focus in our lives without getting overwhelmed by our social media addiction and how the media manipulates us for the sake of gaining more eyeballs on the media itself (the media is the message, as Marshall McLuhan concluded years ago).

The unsettling possibility is that if you’re convinced that none of this is a problem for you—that social media hasn’t turned you into an angrier, less empathetic, more anxious, or more numbed-out version of yourself—that might be because it has. Your finite time has been appropriated, without your realizing anything’s amiss.
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It’s been obvious for some time now, of course, that all this constitutes a political emergency. By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fueling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible.

The book is a gem. I conclude with his advice for a more creative life.

In practical terms, three rules of thumb are especially useful for harnessing the power of patience as a creative force in daily life. The first is to develop a taste for having problems.
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Once you give up on the unattainable goal of eradicating all your problems, it becomes possible to develop an appreciation for the fact that life just is a process of engaging with problem after problem…
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The second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism.

When you accept that you probably won’t produce very much on any individual day, you will find that you produce much more over the long term.

One critical aspect of the radical incrementalist approach, which runs counter to much mainstream advice on productivity, is thus to be willing to stop when your daily time is up, even when you’re bursting with energy and feel as though you could get much more done.
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Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again…

The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality.

This is the principle known as “Stay On The Bus”. You don’t find originality around the corner. It is in the depth of the work.

… it begins at all only for those who who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage – the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.

Burkeman uses the metaphor of the long-married couple.

To experience the profound mutual understanding of the long-married couple, you have to stay married to one person; to know what it’s like to be deeply rooted in a particular community and place, you have to stop moving around. Those are the kinds of meaningful and singular accomplishments that just take the time they take.

Looking for Alaska – niet dat Alaska – door John Green

Looking for Alaska - book cover

Ik dacht op de een of andere manier dat Looking for Alaska zich ergens in de staat Alaska afspeelde. Dat is dus niet zo.

Miles is een verlegen, slungelige jongen die lijkt te weten wat hij kan en wat hij wil. Uit eigen beweging gaat hij naar een kostschool. Hij raakt bevriend met Chip, Takumi en het eigenaardige meisje Alaska, die ook kostschoolleerlingen zijn uit de armere lagen van de samenleving. Ze richten een club op om het op te nemen tegen de arrogante kinderen uit rijkere families.

Miles en zijn vrienden zijn een beetje buitenbeentjes op school. Ze roken en drinken en delen een liefde voor literatuur. Miles wordt verliefd op Alaska. Zij heeft een nogal gecompliceerde jeugd gehad nadat haar moeder op jonge leeftijd overleed.

Aan het einde van het schooljaar verongelukt Alaska midden in de nacht in haar auto op weg naar het graf van haar moeder. De vraag die de achtergebleven tieners bezighoudt, is of ze zelfmoord heeft gepleegd en, nog belangrijker, waarom ze dat zou hebben gedaan. In de tweede helft van het boek gaan Miles en zijn vrienden op zoek naar antwoorden op deze vragen, naast het pesten van Eagle, de decaan van de school. In het tweede deel mis ik de eigenaardigheden van het personage Alaska. Maar ze is dood.

John Green zegt in de epiloog van het boek dat dit verhaal niet zo succesvol was als zijn andere boeken, vooral omdat zijn vaste redacteur hem bij dit boek niet kon helpen. Ik denk dat Green een beetje zelfvertrouwen mist, want Looking for Alaska is gewoon een heel goed boek. In de stijl van Anthropocene Reviewed geef ik Looking for Alaska … 5 sterren.

Meer over John Green: The Anthropocene Reviewed, Turtles All The Way Down.

Douglas Coupland on Novelty and Craft; the analog world gets new attention

Schagen - fine art print by niek de greef
Schagen

I am reading Shopping in Jail by Douglas Coupland. In the essay, I find two interesting quotes:

…novelty that reflects the powerful but less prominent forces of any culture is interesting and worthy of exploration.

I recognize this in photography. Pictures of the parade are never as interesting as pictures of what is happening on its edges. The people watching the events are more interesting than the event itself.

In an ever-flattening world of downloaded non-physical experiences, the crafted object is in the ascendant and ultimately might prove to be the trunk of the tree that gives rise to the next dominant wave of modern art.

The essays are from some time ago, and we have since seen the rise and death of the NFT as an ultimate non-physical experience in art. Yet, the analog world gets new attention when digital artifacts emerge.

The experience in concerts and festivals emerged when music went digital and streamed. At the same time, streaming channels have the distribution of music accessible to anyone. They are no longer limited to large record companies. This allows more novelty and experiments on the edge. Now, analog music media such as vinyl and cassettes reappear, and “merch”—another name for analog artifacts sold directly by the musicians—has become the standard and is more profitable for many bands than their music.

In the literary world, a similar flattening change has taken place. The internet has reduced the volume of the book-reading audience. Still, at the same time, it has opened up a channel for sharing writing and ideas. While the mainstream e-book business seems dominated by Amazon, there is enough opportunity to access readers with some additional marketing efforts, and these efforts can make a significant difference.

Social media have turned into sales channels for photography and other arts—and we should treat them as such—but analog experiences such as books, zines, prints, and expositions are where art is enjoyed.

Recent photo prints

Life Ceremony, today’s absurdity and staying sane

I am reading Sayaka Murata’s collection of stories, Life Ceremony. The stories describe futuristic societies you can’t imagine could ever become reality. Furniture and clothing are made from the remains of deceased people. Artificial insemination is the norm. Raising children is paid out to specialized organizations. A girl keeps a man as a pet. After a death, the deceased is ceremoniously prepared and served to the bereaved, who proceed to insemination after the meal to fulfill life’s circle.

All this seems ridiculous. Like a democratic society as seemingly impossible as one in which a president has the power to acquit convicted criminals. In which billionaires conspire to ensure they get richer and can draw even more power to themselves. In which a self-proclaimed genius running a car company has no qualms about making a Hitler salute. A Brett Easton Ellis novel turned into reality.

Staying informed is important, but the constant barrage of horrific news from a government populated by narcissists can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it’s necessary to take a step back for the sake of our mental well-being.

Let’s instead focus on the beautiful things people make. Like books by Sayaka Murata’s.