Are you 'hollowed out' by your lifestyle?

[peter]

I saw western society described the other day as being 'hollowed out' by a diet of low-grade entertainment, shallow thinking and general laziness of mindset. A sort of roman empire in decline due to the indulgence of our lifestyles? Does it [do you think] apply to you? Worse still - does it apply to me!

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

IDK, I often hear "there's no good music nowadays" and I wonder where this judgment is coming from. It's subjective anyway and besides, given all the bands there are, how many does the average person know about? The cultural cynics might just be unlucky enough not to have come across examples that would contradict their cynicism...

[aTOMiC]

I'm old enough to remember when music was still special. It took effort to acquire it and it took patience to hear a specific song on the radio. I remember when you had to wait a year to see a certain film on tv and if you weren't sitting in front of the set at the appointed time you flat out missed it. Now I can listen to and watch whatever I want whenever I want to. There's nothing very special about it. If I want to learn something, Mr. Google is waiting to give me the information at the push of a button. If I want to buy a rare comic book its sent to my front door via Ebay. Its like this in many aspects of my life. There was a time that I thought it was pretty awesome but as time goes by it all just tends to make me yawn.

I think this over-saturation of content is making us all pretty bored most of the time and when you aren't stimulated by something special you tend not to be as inspired to achieve much. It reminds me of a line from the film The Incredibles. Syndrome says to Mr Incredible "I'll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super...no one will be."

Of course this is not a universally held point of view but its the very first thing I think of when I read things like the subject of this discussion thread.

[peter]

It took me years of searching second hand bookshops and flea markets to collect a series of paperback novels and the joy of finally finding the last one to complete the set is hard to describe. Now almost all of that type of patience and pleasure is gone. But are we more shallow, less capable of placing demands upon ourselves - no, I really don't think so. The young have different perspectives​, different expectations, different levels of acceptance - but in my experience they seem to be doing fine.

[aTOMiC]

The young have different perspectives​, different expectations, different levels of acceptance - but in my experience they seem to be doing fine.

Time will put this notion to the test. The fruit that is born from the millennial generation 20 years hence will largely define who they are and how our current lifestyle will be judged.

Hopefully many of the world's ills will be solved by the technology generation and not amplified by it.

[wayfriend]

All the time I see incredibly dedicated young people devoting vast amounts of time and energy toward some highly specific, personal focus. Be it Youtube videos, or open software, or technological research, or creating networks of people.

And I see plenty who don't.

I think that what's changed in the world is that, today, you don't HAVE to invest yourself in something just to get ordinary things done. It's easier than ever to just be mentally lazy and cruise through life. But you are more FREE to invest yourself in what matters to you, if you want to.

I could see the future going either way. It depends on the relative numbers of one versus the other.

Which means it all depends on whether or not people find struggle rewarding. If we keep taking away all the incentives, locking them up and doling them out only to the pre-ordained few, then, well, we're all headed down couch potato highway, without anyone to care.

[Vain]

This is why I listen to good old fashioned records

[Vain]

This is why I listen to good old fashioned records

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

@wayfriend, totally off-topic but I just saw your location and I'm dying inside

[Linna Heartbooger]

I saw western society described the other day as being 'hollowed out' by a diet of low-grade entertainment, shallow thinking and general laziness of mindset. A sort of roman empire in decline due to the indulgence of our lifestyles? Does it [do you think] apply to you?

No.
I live in a complex moral universe awash with meaning and purpose.

I'm going to make a leap from people filling their lives with entertainment and shallow thinking... to how we use one of the resources people in the West think about every day - money.

My family basically decided to double down on some kind of a poverty ethic-ish thing.
The first week after I got married, I was taken aback to discover just how much my husband believed in -not buying and consuming things-.
Fortunately, I'd been raised by parents who lived really frugally, and so this wasn't a horrendous hardship... but I really didn't see the point!

But now.. I get to live a life like this as a part of a team.
I'd hear him and his brothers being competitive with each-other about who found the best sale on produce that week, and it's hilarious.
What we don't spend on ourselves is freed to use in other ways.
The time we don't use up trying to get more and more money ("Why do you labor for what does not satisfy?") is wonderfully freed up.

I think everyone, deep down, really wants to have a life full of meaning and purpose.
I think there's a fear factor when contemplating taking the plunge to going for that kind of life, though.
I think trying to live a kind of life that you've not seen anyone else model can be really hard. (for people like me; if I see someone do a thing, I can suddenly do that thing.)
I think that many people deeply need the encouragement of others running alongside them.

[Sorus]

I'm old enough to remember when music was still special. It took effort to acquire it and it took patience to hear a specific song on the radio. I remember when you had to wait a year to see a certain film on tv and if you weren't sitting in front of the set at the appointed time you flat out missed it. Now I can listen to and watch whatever I want whenever I want to. There's nothing very special about it. If I want to learn something, Mr. Google is waiting to give me the information at the push of a button. If I want to buy a rare comic book its sent to my front door via Ebay. Its like this in many aspects of my life. There was a time that I thought it was pretty awesome but as time goes by it all just tends to make me yawn.

I wrote a rather lengthy post a while back about the perils of instant gratification, but I seem to have scrapped it. I realize there's a certain amount of irony about being on a 'technology is evil' soapbox while I'm posting on the internet, so I've been trying to hold back.

[Avatar]

I think WF is right...like most things, there's an up-side and a down-side.

I don't worry about it really.

--A