I don't think anybody can even begin to notice the effect unless they detach from the various channels first. If you don't consume any content (including TV, radio, Hackernews) for a few months (near impossible, but I did it once) you realize the absolute mental captivity literally everybody else, including your very loved ones are living in.
I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo—a 1200 pages unabridged, clothbound edition that will spend 40 pages of wandering setup just to deliver one striking image. It was a banger in it's time, and it's still a banger, but it's striking how much it asked of its readers. It will take me the rest of the year to finish.
And this is the thing, we really do live in a toxic attention ecosystem that rots our brains. Like the author, I've been trying to reassert control my own attention, and it's shockingly hard to do.
I'm not sure if I'll manage to make it work. But let's suppose I do: I've deleted all social media, deliberately set my relationship with news, if I feel the urge to post dump it in a paper notebook instead, and somehow achieve the miracle of getting slack to chill out...
... much like learning to cook is great for me but doesn't solve the social costs from widespread ultraprocessed diets and resulting metabolic disorders, getting my own attentive house in order does not change the global brainrot and toxic political incentives.
If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears.
Leading by example might not seem like it has immediate or direct impact, but it does have an effect nevertheless. You don't necessarily need to beat everyone over the head with a new way to live life. This tends to have the opposite of the desired effect. If others passively observe you and think "wow that person looks super healthy and happy" they may subconsciously seek to emulate your behavior.
That it happened, perhaps not, but some of the details are definitely getting lost in the collective memory. The other day I heard a political commentator claim that lockdowns in the states were in place for “years”, which is false by any objective measure.
I guess neither of those things is conclusive evidence either way. Bleh.
Well it can be like that if you spend your time scrolling stupid stuff on tiktok but for learning about the world, if you want to, I think it's better than it used to be. "40 pages of wandering setup" doesn't make you smart, it wastes your time you could be using to learn something more interesting.
Not saying you should stick with books that are boring, and you no longer want that experience, but stating that 40 pages of setup is a waste of one's time is a very strange thing. It's like one guy I know who watches movies (not podcasts, cinema) on 2x "not to waste time". I think it all comes from the same obsession with productivity which ultimately is as sick as the dwindling attention span mentioned in the linked article.
Regarding the "do you remember" section, I honestly don't think I ever knew who three of those people are, and I lack context for what another two events are supposed to mean to me. But then again I've been opting out of most news for several years.
Also if you want to read classic books I highly recommend getting the most accessible translation/version you can find. The material is often dense enough without the style of writing making things harder. But this sometimes means paying for one vs finding it on Gutenberg.
OTOH I remember Velocity from Dean Koontz, picked up on an airport (as an adult), which I didn't put back until landing and having to leave the plane. Somebody on HN once commented that these days books are much more like current TV shows, action packed and full of cliff hangers.
We’ve roughly doubled co2 in human history. Much of that in the last 100 years alone. They say that measurable drowsiness at 1000ppm and when you consider the atmospheric co2 being well above 400ppm and indoor conditions often more than doubling that i wonder if we’re not going to hit a measurable stupefaction of the world. Perhaps it’s already happening.
https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d...
Am I missing something?
Do you remember James Mason?
I remember the James Mason who was one of the most famous actors of his decades in the film business.
I remember the obscure funk artist James Mason, who released a fantastic album called Rhythm Of Life.
Neither of these strike me as someone most people today would know.
I would urge people not to write like this. It is likely to backfire by sounding pompous and sophomoric.
It does not include slow and meaningful content. This content gets shunned by not being shared/liked/commented on.
You don't need to go that far. Something from 30 years ago will pretty much seem like an alternative reality.
Contemporary fiction from 60 years ago however feels just as much like a "period piece" as the victorian classics now do. Reading "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" I was most struck by passages containing things that were so normal back then they needed no explanation or elaboration, yet are so alien to us now I had to read up a lot more about what they were talking about.
I guess there's going to be more inscrutable things from my childhood the older I get.
Gatsby on the other hand is a considerable departure from modernity.
You don't have to exaggerate the description of anything to send a message, thats the literary equivalent of screaming.
- There was never a golden age of wide “Overton Windows.”
- Composing a rambling article like this takes a lot of concentration.
- In the oldest days a typical man would get sufficient exercise with the physical labor of life as a warrior or farmer or peasant laborer. I suspect even merchants were more active. Now we have to make a specific activity for ourselves called “working out.”
I guess it’s the same with phones, etc. We must explicitly choose to concentrate.
- Avoid TikTok.
> Don't worry...
I'm not worried, at least, not about me. I am worried about just how many people _do_ think this is descriptive of themselves.
I was going to rant here about loss of a sense of individual autonomy, and how the modern sense of "we can't help being addicted to doomscrolling" is another example of adopting victimhood; but as I got to the bottom of the article, I found the advice to be things I actually agree with:
> Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there.
I couldn't agree more 8-) Really, literally, just turn off the phone, at least during recreational times of the day (and make sure you have "recreational times of the day").
nathan_compton•5mo ago
The overton window is wider than its ever been at any point in history.
Like I think this particular thing was overblown in the first place and also people are already correcting for it.
Muromec•5mo ago
At least the article doesn't blame "them" for doing it to "us". Or is it implied? Does the other article blame on the usual suspects of the day?
nathan_compton•5mo ago
In other respects I think the submission is more on point, though still reactionary.
4bpp•5mo ago
phoronixrly•5mo ago
SpicyLemonZest•5mo ago
phoronixrly•5mo ago
Also how many of the posts you see hit the front pages or become viral? Are you sure they aren't shunned and ostricised by not being awarded comments/likes/shares?
mattgreenrocks•5mo ago
In this way, social media can be almost unbearably lonely for me. So many people corralled to talk about that which gets them Internet Points. But they seem like they’re right there.
Concrete example is I’m trying to learn how to build a tone for djent metal, which is a highly syncopated guitar sound that needs special considerations from your signal chain to achieve a distorted, highly staccato (at times) clear tone. I find a lot of discussion when it was fresh (2010-2015) but have difficulty getting much discussion on it nowadays because it’s not seen as fresh. Is it because it is somewhat niche? Absolutely. But even the people that are into it are much less enthused. It’s like the info has to be dug up vs being easily passed around.
andy99•5mo ago
komali2•5mo ago
Check out all the new religions that popped up, and new forms of communal living and societal organization that were being experimented with in the early 1800s in the United States:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district
I feel like these kinds of conversations and experiments don't really happen anymore, despite our incredible interconnectedness. Where's the global Oneida movement?
Or think about the world during early to mid 20th century, when socialist revolutions were occuring everywhere. I believe the Overton window of this era was wide enough to cause sweeping change in capitalist nations as well, such as improvements to worker's conditions. George Lucas somewhat addresses the shrinking of the Overton window in this era in an interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI "They never would have let me make [Star Wars] if they knew what I was doing..."
These days, organization of society as a capitalist liberal democracy is a given. It's such a given that anyone even aesthetically organized differently is automatically the world's bad guy - e.g. market-organized but still "Communist" China. Or perhaps evil Iran, with its restrictions on what women can wear (outside of Tehran) (no capitalist liberal democracy restricts women's rights at a fundamental level!!!). I haven't seen a serious conversation about alternative modes of organization outside of little bubbles of fascists or leftists.
In what ways are you seeing a wider Overton window than before? For me I think the obvious ways are surrounding mental health, minority rights, and queer lifestyles. Definitely people talk more openly in the western world about that now, and it seems much less scary now to be queer than even a few decades ago.
Nopoint2•5mo ago