Thursday 10/19/23
How do people not know that the $ goes on the left side of the number? People may become incapable of knowing anything. They'll start to forget their own names. I'm not exaggerating. I really believe this is a possibility for humans at some point, or whatever they are, because the label won't really work. I often think it doesn't work now. To me, one's humanity is at least in part earned. It's not just conferred because one traveled down a birth canal once.
The least interesting people--and I know many are essentially tied for that grouping of spots--tend to be the most narcissistic, which is ironic when you think about it, because what could they possibly find compelling about themselves?
All MFA fiction is narcissistic. None of its writers ever think about readers, or a single reader, even. It's not for readers. It's not for anyone. Is it for the person who wrote it? No. It's not honest enough for it to be therapeutic for them, though they are just writing about themselves, because none of them can invent anything. "Oh, look, another story about the members of a creative writing group in Brooklyn. Gee, I wonder if that is you. What an unsolvable mystery."
People detest experts, or when they don't detest them, they fear them. The more viable the expert is--I mean in terms of actual knowledge, not titles--then the less there is for people to be able to say. For example, let's say you had this outstanding expert on rockets, and they were talking about space travel. What could you add? Are you going to gainsay anything? No. You can't. They covered it and covered it correctly with a knowledge beyond anything you have, and you know it. Are you going to add that they're correct? Same idea. Totally not your place and you risk coming across as a fool.
But take some idiot who says, "Yeah, you know, the thing about rockets, you know, that they get wrong, you know, is they try to go around things, you know, and that's why it takes so long, you know, to get, you know, to another planet. We need, you know, rockets that can go through stars, you know, and shit, and moons, you know, and then we could, you know, explore like other planets."
Well. Then everyone gets a voice to add on or argue against or just say whatever stupid shit they please. Which is what people want. They want what a gym calls a "No judgment zone" so that they can just be as dumb as they please without risk of exposure or embarrassment.
Want to talk to me about the Beatles? No, right? That would suck. That's what people think. What are you going to say? How is that conversation going to work? (I mean, you could. I'd be nice. But people want to feel like they have something to contribute.) But if you're in a bar, and there's some moron running out his Beatles theory, then it's no problem to jump in. No risk. No reward either, of course. No point, save being able to think, "My voice is every bit as valid as your voice!" and a person getting to listen to the sound of their own voice, which people love, no matter what they're saying.
Popularity and platforming is now based entirely on the above concept. What kind of world do you think that is going to be? What kind of progress do you think humans--we'll use the term here--will be making in a society and culture like that? A lot? Or none? Or, less than none, in that they'll be going backwards?
