Imagine All The People...

living life in peace...

"...in the course of my habitual dipping into and out of what passes in American culture for Culture, it felt as if my nose were being rubbed in something. Something unpleasant. I kept finding things that purported to be cultural commentary, social commentary, high cinematic art, or even theology while being, to my eyes at least, something very different and very much less than what we had a right to expect...I had to ask myself, were these things out there on every car radio and on every beach-reading lap all just independently hopelessly mediocre, or were they part of what might be called a Mind? The new American Mind. The numbing (if not dumbing) Middle Mind?...

I concluded that in fact they did have something in common, a shared DNA of some kind...I asked what the Middle Mind wanted? What was its reason for being? My conclusion was: it didn't want us to think...no thought from any quarter that is a threat to business as usual...

...[T]he Middle Mind's version of thought is indistinguishable from not-thought, from what we should call mere product. The Middle Mind is in the business of producing 'content' while semeing to provide an authentic culture...

In much the same way, the "imagination" is made available to us through the Middle Mind, thus assuring that [our own] imagination will remain unavailable. My fundamental thesis is this: the imagination has a social function that requires two things, critique and reinvention. The imagination is inherently destabilizing. When we accept the Middle Mind as our culture (or, worse yet, when we demand it as consumers), we are not merely being stupid or unsophisticated or "low-brow." We are vigorously conspiring against ourselves. We murder our own capacity for critique and invention..."

White, Curtis. The Middle Mind, HarperCollins, New York: 2003.


I'm not sure how Mr. White's book was received. I could tell by the introduction that he camps out with the politically liberal crowd in the US, so I'm certain that he took a beating, as it appears this book will touch on politics, and anything that touches politics these days - left or right - takes a beating.

Anyway, I put it up here because I'm am generally distressed by the cheap and shallow world that passes me day in and day out. Not that there aren't points of light. Not that the "good ol' days" were better (but maybe they were). I simply think that we've been placated by cheap pleasures to the extent that we no longer recognize rich, deep lives of nobel struggle, and what disgusts me more is that we wile away our time philosophizing about bubble gum and lollipops and honestly think we are intellectual. It is, as Mr. White claims, as if our culture defines the important issues and whips us up into an emotional frenzy so that we can consume and entertain with endless ping-pong matches of radio talk show soundbites.

And dare one suggest that we end the ping-pong match, there arises a cry to parallel one heard in Ramah...

"...weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."

See how we love our mindless distractions,
Old-shoe stability,
And endless attractions.

Light not on us, thou Unholy Muse,
Thou fiend - so we've labeled -
We resist this abuse!

Farewell to minds, as well as to Arms,
Scarlet red Letter day,
Monkey blood charm...

Cooling this cauldron - the human fight,
Not cowed but forgotten
In gluttoness night.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 3/19/2006 02:09:00 PM