Addictions and Sheep

The computer, and subsequently the Internet, has devoured our lives. That's what I surmised from the Bloggingheads video. I have to agree with a lot of the things mentioned in this section on Computers, Drugs and Modern Student Culture. Most of what I could hear through the atrocious audio quality, I already knew. I'm a Computer Science major, I've studied the social influence of computers. It's something that many of us are aware of, the addictive nature of technology. But then there's a lot I have to disagree with on their arguments on culture. Technology, yes, social norm no. It's hard to fully understand what we go through without being one of us. And that's what these two professors aren't. Students.

Unfortunately, it's that plus more that made this video undeniably boring to me. There wasn't clash, there wasn't conflict. I want to see some action! I want them to jump at each others' throats, not agree on every bloody point. If you're going to throw two professors at each other in a head to head video chat conference for a blog, you might as well make it two different people. Instead, they are so similar, the video might as well have been a single person giving a lecture. They had interesting points, there's no denying that. The presentation was just so disappointingly boring when it had so much potential. What a waste...

I spent most of my life isolated from other kids my age. The result was that I grew up with a very adult perspective on life, mostly my parents'. I also grew up in a third world country cut off from most modern technology. Combine the two and I'm an old fart in a young whipper snapper's body. When I come across other people 100 percent absorbed in technology, I wonder why? And it wasn't just the Internet. Professor Edmundson was wrong. I deal with people even now obsessed with the latest rumors on Gossip Girl, or who Sylar will kill next in Heroes. We are still attached to our televisions, just as much as to our computers.

His point is true, however. People like constant entertainment. xkcd said it best. His other argument was also true. People always want to be somewhere else. They don't want to be in their crappy homes living their crappy lives. They want to be in the show, they want to live the lives of the people they avidly watch. They want to be the level 60 sorcerer that they spend hours training. Nevertheless Professor Deresiewicz is wrong. Can't be right all the time, sorry. People do bond with technology. It allows us to live in a fantasy world, to escape. Escapism is the reason behind this. Just as they said, 30 years ago people had one form of drug, that drug was to escape the world. Acid gives you a wonderful kaleidoscope of new worlds. Ecstasy turns the entire world into a hedonist's perspective. Weed makes everything funny. It's all to escape the harsh realities. Now instead of drugs, we're are using the Internet. Our addiction went from chemicals to technology.

Part of the problem is, I can't disagree completely with what Deresiewicz (God, his students must have had fun with his name) without sounding like a hypocrite. He talks about how a lot of the students that are overloaded are those who fall back on several extra curricular activities, building up "a parallel university". I'm in much the same predicament, as are several of my friends. Student run clubs for everything from computer science to math to theater to radio. I'm in loads. It's exhausting, but they're all things I enjoy doing. It makes me wish that a lot of this was worth credit, but it isn't. Universities, despite claiming to be liberal arts and open to general education, aren't about giving you what you want to learn, but what they think you should learn. It amuses me that Chapman was the filming location for the 'bad' school in the film Accepted. The one that didn't agree with the principle of allowing students to create their own classes.

Edmundson's call for dissension brought back some fond memories of my History teacher's class, when he would challenge us to disagree with his theories on causes of historical events. But we didn't. We didn't challenge his all powerful authority. They're right, "there is no no to the yes in our culture". We've lost a lot of the independent thought that resulted from rebellion. And even in the rebellion that does exist today, the prep culture, the goth culture, the emo culture, the whatever-clique-you-choose culture, they're all the same, without a single independent thought. They don't idealize one person, and attempt to follow that example, they idealize each other and remain in a stagnant sense of mind. Nothing new, nothing to reach for. They are each other.

Therein lies the inherent problem of their arguments. While they might have one or two good points, the underlying logic is wrong. They struggle to understand us, but one can't truly understand someone else without being them. Deresiewicz claims there is no more 'soft socialism' in society. Hardly. Yes, there isn't independent thought from others, but that's the way it's always been. That much hasn't changed from the past. The ones they mention, such as Marx, those were rare exceptions in life. Hegel didn't grow up in a neighborhood full of philosophical geniuses, he was the only one. Of course most of the students they run into aren't going to be the next Marx. The odds are 1 in 6 billion. That's one HUGE number.

When you come down to it, they're going about everything the wrong way. This video is nothing more than the self righteous ramblings of two pretentious old farts. They struggle to understand student culture without realising that nothing has changed. We'll always have our addictions. We'll always be mindless drones. There will be the occasional person that stands out. Who is different. Jesus. Ghandi. Abraham Lincoln. Homer. Adam Smith. But how many billions, no trillions of people have lived and died meaningless lives before they came along?