I'd heard that Machiavelli was speaking ironically, but I didn't know the depths of it. Thank you for the article pointer! I try not to visit Cracked -- as you say, it tends to devour one's time -- but it's a surprisingly smart place sometimes.
I agree completely that free speech is for fucktards as well as the kind, intelligent, and wise, and that in the final analysis this is absolutely a good thing. To butcher a Supreme Court opinion about flag-burning, we can imagine no better response to a message of lies and hate than to spread one's own of truth and love. Besides, we're all fucktards to someone, and it does us good to hear our fellow fucktards out and maybe understand where they're coming from.
But it's interesting to me that Bradbury the prophet felt so strongly about the harm of new media per se. Bradbury wrote sci-fi, the same genre about which another author famously declared, "Ninety percent of everything is crap." He must have known that every medium is dominated by what you eloquently call "escapism without soul," as hollow and full of empty calories as a chocolate Easter bunny. To prophesy that new media will be any worse than old media borders on technophobia. But then, Plato was known to worry that writing was a corrupting invention because it reduced the need for men to use their memories and synthesize their knowledge. Either we really have been falling from grace for the last several millennia, or intellectuals just have a habit of worrying about changing media for no good reason.
Anyway -- hello! I read your blog post and it made me have thoughts in my brain! Thank you :D
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Date: 2011-08-03 04:04 am (UTC)I agree completely that free speech is for fucktards as well as the kind, intelligent, and wise, and that in the final analysis this is absolutely a good thing. To butcher a Supreme Court opinion about flag-burning, we can imagine no better response to a message of lies and hate than to spread one's own of truth and love. Besides, we're all fucktards to someone, and it does us good to hear our fellow fucktards out and maybe understand where they're coming from.
But it's interesting to me that Bradbury the prophet felt so strongly about the harm of new media per se. Bradbury wrote sci-fi, the same genre about which another author famously declared, "Ninety percent of everything is crap." He must have known that every medium is dominated by what you eloquently call "escapism without soul," as hollow and full of empty calories as a chocolate Easter bunny. To prophesy that new media will be any worse than old media borders on technophobia. But then, Plato was known to worry that writing was a corrupting invention because it reduced the need for men to use their memories and synthesize their knowledge. Either we really have been falling from grace for the last several millennia, or intellectuals just have a habit of worrying about changing media for no good reason.
Anyway -- hello! I read your blog post and it made me have thoughts in my brain! Thank you :D