The Instant Gratification of Stupidity

AKMA, reflecting on sermons, writes

As I stop and look around, I observe both the amplified tendency toward speed that Dave [Rogers] cites and a patience for interesting narration (taking as examples Garrison Keillor, Lily Tomlin, Spalding Gray, Eve Ensler, extended raps, poetry slams, and other such cultural practices and practitioners). I don’t see people unable to follow a story, an argument, a sermon, but people who have diminished patience for tedium.

Oooh, a diminished patience for tedium! I like it!

But it reminds me of a line in my Upcoming Book with which I have become uncomfortable. It says something like “Are our attention spans getting shorter, or is the world becoming more interesting?” Facile, glib, and missing the real point which is that both are happening simultaneously. Likewise, part of the tedium for which we are losing patience seems to me to be the patience required to start slow and build, to do scut work so that your thinking can advance later. Instant knowledge gratification. As AKMA, a seriously well-read, multi-lingual scholar obviously knows, mastery often requires tedium. I worry about this, seeing my own impatience eroding my ability to think and to learn.

(Flameproofing myself: Yes, mastery is a sexist and politically charged term. But you know what I mean: If you want to learn ancient Greek, chemistry, medicine, piano or how to dance, you’re going to have to endure some boredom.)

BTW, AKMA also has a thought-provoking piece on the significance of the facelessness (literal) of the Web.

Categories: Uncategorized dw