Category: ideas

“We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy.”

“Why is our culture still chasing, consuming, striving ever harder, even though we know in our sophisticated minds that it’s an unrewarding route to eco-geddon? New scientific studies are helping to reveal why. It’s our primitive brains. These marvellous machines got us down from the trees and around the world, through ice ages, famines, plagues and disasters, into our unprecedented era of abundance. But they never had to evolve an instinct that said, ‘enough’.”

“As well as geopolitical angst and technological luxury, the spirit of the age also revolves around a big paradox: that in an era of supposedly rapid change, our popular culture is defined by a mass refusal to let go of the past. Pat references to postmodernism won’t work here, because what’s afoot is far more culturally stifling than that very worn-out term implies. Think about it this way: whereas, say, 1968 and 1958 denoted two different worlds, how is it that 2008 and 1998 seem so close?”

“The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on – that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies.”

“Beginning in the early 1990s, we got an era of market triumphalism in this country. Those who sincerely believed that the market is the best way to deliver all things are still enjoying their moment. It means that these other realms that are not as well delivered in that way are suffering. This includes questions of how we fund higher education, secondary education, healthcare, how we fund the humanities, the arts and pure science.”

“Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.”

Porn is No. one, of course. But poker was next. “Poker drew more interest than MySpace, YouTube and golf. It even dominated the interest in the volatile Britney Spears.”

“While advances in science and technology cannot be doubted, the humanities do not necessarily keep pace. Today we may be no better positioned than 20 years ago to appraise our intellectual situation. Of course, few like to believe that we live in an era of mediocrity.”

“People are not generally negative about their own lives. In fact, we systematically exaggerate the control we have as individuals.” So why the pessimism about the larger world?

For aging musicians, the decision to retire, if it ever comes, usually comes as a result of the ravages of age. “The performer, unlike the creator, is as much athlete as artist, and thus is slave to the flesh.” But when an artist doesn’t know enough to exit the spotlight, it makes for an uncomfortable situation for audience, critic, and performer alike.