Ex iphonis

The other day I was reading an article, where some celebrity-type of person – and for the love of guns, can't remember who it was – started profusely gushing how culture is being buried under an avalanche of technology-inspired neurosis', how personal communication, art, deep thought and creativity is drowned in the electric hiss of our Facebook statuses. How the "real things" become unimportant.

The tone of the article was preacher-like and nauseous.  And even though I generally tended to follow the same thought process, something about it was off-putting, and I started to think about it in more focus.

And realized how this line of thinking is wrong.

The real problem is the human trait to think of the past in a far more idealized manner than we think about the present. It has to do with the way our brain functions, I guess – I'm no neuroscientist, but the information which I possess, points me to the fact that our mind cannot hold to the whole detailed picture of the past, but is powerful enough to process every minute detail and inconvenience in the present.

That's why we like the past. Because it's a photo that had been ran through every Photshop filter possible until there's just blurry shapes and that one thing that you really liked. Or hated. It's an ever-changing landscape of fantasy-land, filled with noble knights, and profound truths and solid morals and clear-cut values.

That's what the average man sees in the past. What the average man doesn't see, though, is that the past is made of average men.

The harsh reality is that gadgets, and iPhones and tablets are NOT killing good literature, that clip TV DOESN'T ruin our perception. That celebrity-gossip DOESN'T make people into mindless drones. That shitty movies and professional sports are NOT taking  people away from classic art and music. That tweeting, sexting and showing off your personal life online DOESN'T lead to the downfall of a person's moral character.

The truth is that the average human character had always been pretty shitty from the point of someone on a more elevated position.

Consider the fact that circa the 18th-19th century, which is when our western civilization was supposed to flourish, when the greates works of art and the great scientific advances were made, 95% of the population around the globe were illiterate dirty fucks. And about 0.004% were literate dirty fucks and loved crude romance novels and ogled at bearded women in circuses the same way you stare at Miley Cyrus these days.

Consider that 98% of people in any given epoch had low taste, horrible communication skills, pretty mediocre mental capabilities (and "mediocre" I use here veeery generously), and their belief in God and Country ended where a bottle of cheap medieval alcohol began. Consider that the overwhelming majority was an unpleasant mess of crude, cattle-brained, fuck. That there never was the time where the useless, worthless majority was preoccupied with the "real, important things" – 100 years ago women were babbling around the laundry about their husbands, and didn't discuss Descartes and Voltaire.

And then, after all this, you'll understand that nothing was ruined culturally, for the most part. It's just that this nature of the average man became more evident. The tricky part is, though, that the UN-average man had lost his will to rip through the torns to the stars, that the average man became a desirable state of being. That is the difference, and that is the danger.

But modern technology doesn't make people dumber or ruin culture. Our modern way of life doesn't undermine some fragile cultural wisdom - for there was none from the start, for most people.

The naked king proclamation now would sound as "we just gave an iPad to an 90 IQ soil-toiler, what did you fucking expect"?

Technology doesn't change human nature. It just exposes it.